MELBOURNE: Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will help tackle violent extremism online and will also be on the board of an environmental prize set up by Prince William as she looks ahead to a life after politics.
Ardern stepped down as prime minister in January saying she had “no more in the tank” to lead the country and would also not seek re-election to parliament. She is due to give her final speech in parliament on Wednesday.
Ardern, who became the youngest female leader in the world when she won power in 2017 at the age of 37, will serve as an unpaid special envoy for the Christchurch Call, an initiative she co-founded in 2019 to bring together countries and technology com-panies to combat extremism, the government said. Attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-largest city, in March 2019 killed 51 people dead and wounded 40. The white supremacist gunman who car-ried out the assault live-streamed part of it on Facebook.
“The Christchurch Call is a foreign policy priority for the government and Jacinda Ar-dern is uniquely placed to keep pushing forward with the goal of eliminating violent extremist content online,” her replacement as prime minister, Chris Hipkins, said in a statement. –Agencies
