Chaker Khazaal is an award-winning Palestinian-Canadian reporter, speaker, Huffington Post contributor, and author of Best Seller novel Tale of Tala (2017) and the Confessions of a War Child trilogy (2013-2015).
Born in 1987 as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, Chaker grew up in Bourj El Barajneh camp in Beirut. At a young age, he participated in several local plays and starred in the Palestinian film Sugar of Jaffa. He later immigrated to Canada. Being one of four recipients of the Global Leader of Tomorrow Award, Chaker studied at York University in Toronto and graduated in 2009 with a B.A. in International Development Studies.
Chaker is an advocate for refugees and youth affairs. A savvy communicator, he has spoken at a number of platforms including:
- United Nations Headquarters (New York)
- HuffPost Live (New York)
- Google (San Francisco)
- msnbc’s Road Map show (New York)
- International Youth Conference (Bahrain)
- Thomson Reuters Foundation (London)
- Launch of the 8th Arab Youth Survey (Dubai)
- Harvard Arab World Conference 2017 (Jordan)
- MarComms Conference (Dubai)
- Facebook (Dubai)
- United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Conference (Cairo)
- World Government Summit (Dubai)
- UK House of Commons (London)
- World Youth Forum in (Egypt)
- UNAOC’s 8th Global Forum (New York)
- Emirates Literature Festival (Dubai)
- Inter-Parliamentary Global Conference (Azerbaijan)
- Women on the Front Lines Conference (Amman)
- University of Santiago (Chile)
- American University of Malta (Malta)
- American University of Cairo (Egypt)
- World Youth Conference on Tolerance (India)
- Parliaments (UK, India, Azerbaijan...)
In 2015, Esquire Middle East named him Man of the Year; and in 2016, Chaker was ranked first by Arabian Business Magazine in the 100 Most Powerful Arabs Under 40. In the same year, he was presented with the Mentor Arabia Award by Queen Silvia of Sweden and Prince Turki Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. In December 2016, Chaker was awarded the Global Trailblazer together with Arianna Huffington by New York based NGO Bridges of Understanding.
In 2017, Chaker was appointed as ambassador of Silatech, an international social initiative that works to create jobs and expand economic opportunities for young Arabs. In 2018, the UN Refugee Agency announced him as a High Profile Supporter, part of UNHCR’s Goodwill Ambassador Program.
His latest book — Tale of Tala — presents the journey of a Palestinian refugee from a camp in Lebanon to human traffickers in Europe where she becomes a prostitute. Tale of Tala is a love story that is a descriptive narrative of the plight of refugees today, inspired by interviews conducted by Khazaal during his reporting trip to Europe and the Middle East in 2015. This romantic thriller was released in September 2017 and toured 29 cities; it ranked second in Amazon's Best Sellers list.
He is currently writing his fifth novel, Life Dice.
