Ahmad Awad – Director of the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies
Ahmad Awad is the founder and director of the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies, based in Amman, Jordan. He has dedicated most of his professional life to the promotion and defending of human rights, with particular emphasis on socio-economic human rights. At the regional and national levels, he has sought to promote and advocating for greater CSO involvement in decision-making, as well as by conducting and supervising numerous reports, research, policy, and position papers on a broad range of political and socioeconomic issues. Ahmad Awad holding an MA in International Political Economy, he is a member of many civil society networks and coalitions locally, regionally and internationally. During the past years, he has worked as a coordinator for many civil rights networks and coalitions related to the defense of human rights at the local and regional levels. In 2018 honored by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as an exceptional defender of human rights on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ann Måwe – Director of the Swedish Dialogue Institute for the Middle East and North Africa
Ann Måwe is currently the Director of the Swedish Dialogue Institute for the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to that, she was the Ambassador of Sweden to Vietnam 2019- 2024. She started her diplomatic career in 1999 and has held various positions at the MFA, mainly focus on security and development policies in the Middle East and North Africa as well as within UN-affairs. In 2015-2019 she served as director and deputy head of the MENA department (Department for Middle East and North Africa) at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Previously, she has served as Counsellor at the Swedish Permanent Representation to the UN in New York (2005-2010), in charge of the Middle East and North Africa-file in the Security Council section and prior to that on the ECOSOC-team. In 2002-2005 she served as Consul in Jerusalem in charge of political reporting on MEPP, Palestine and UNRWA. Ambassador Måwe holds a Msc. in International Politics focusing on the Middle East and North Africa from SOAS, London (1998) and a BA in Oriental Studies from Uppsala university (1994). Before getting recruited by the MFA she has worked at the SRC (the Social Research Center) at the American University in Cairo
Ms. Berenice Van Den Driessche, Board Member of ARDD-Europe and Senior Policy Advisor with NRC.
Bérénice Van Den Driessche is a Senior Humanitarian Policy Adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), based in Brussels. She leads NRC’s global policy efforts to safeguard humanitarian space, including mitigating the impact of counterterrorism measures and sanctions. Previously, she spearheaded the organization’s engagement with the EU and its Member States on multiple humanitarian crises. With over 15 years of experience in the humanitarian sector, she has worked with the UN and NGOs across the Middle East and the Sahel, including six years in Palestine.
Charles Petrie – Middle East Expert and former U.N. Assistant Secretary General
Sir Charles Petrie Bt, OBE, having acquired an MBA at INSEAD and following a short stint as an investment banker, has had close to 30 years’ experience working in contexts of conflict and famine, much of it with the UN system. With the UN, he has assumed senior-level operational and policy responsibilities in Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gaza and the Palestinian Territories, Myanmar/Burma, Republic of Congo, Rwanda (during the 1994 Genocide), Somalia, South Africa, and Sudan. Charles Petrie resigned from the UN at the end of 2010 as the Secretary General’s representative to Burundi.
Since leaving the UN, Charles Petrie was the special policy advisor to the President of Somalia (2011-2012) and later the Syrian opposition (2017-2019). He also established and coordinated a mechanism to test the credibility of the ceasefires in Myanmar (2012/15). In March 2012, Charles Petrie was designated by the UN Secretary-General to lead an internal review of the UN’s actions in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the conflict, which subsequently led to the Secretary General’s Rights-up-Front policy. In the first half of 2015, Charles Petrie was designated as a member of a group of experts commissioned by the UN Secretary-General to review the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture.
Since February 2021, Charles Petrie has been providing support to Myanmar civil society’s opposition to the military. In this capacity, he has been able to get a better sense of the limits of traditional humanitarian aid in reaching those most affected. Coming out of these observations has been the belief that a new model of international engagement needs to be found and developed that can support the emergence of local governance structures
Daoud Kuttab – Director General of Community Media Network
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and media activists. He is the former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Daoud Kuttab is currently the director general of Community Media Network (CMN) a not for profit media organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab region. CMN is registered in Jordan and Palestine and administers Radio al Balad in Amman, Pen Media in Ramallah and www.ammannet.net (on cyberspace). Daoud is the recent author of State of Palestine NOW. Born in Jerusalem in 1955, Kuttab studied in the United States and has been working in journalism ever since 1980. He has worked in the Arabic print press (Al-Fajr, Al-Quds and Assinara) before moving to the audio visual field. He established and presided over the Jerusalem Film Institute in the 90s. In 1995 he helped establish the Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) a censorship free Arab web site www.amin.org .He established and has headed between 1996 until 2007 the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University. In 1997 he partially moved to Amman (because of family tragedy and remarriage) and in 2000 established the Arab world’s first internet radio station AmmanNet (www.ammannet.net). Mr. Kuttab is active in media freedom efforts in the Middle East. He is a regular columnist for the Jordan Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Daily Star in Lebanon. He has co-produced a number of award winning documentaries and children’s television programs. His op-ed columns have appeared in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angles Times, The Daily Telegraph and Shimbum Daily in Tokyo. He has received a number of international awards among them the CPJ Freedom of Expression Award, the IPI World Press Freedom Hero, PEN Club USA Writing Freedom Award and the Leipzeg Courage in Freedom Award. He is a regular columnist on Huffington Post and the Washington Post’s Post Global blog. Mr. Kuttab is director general of Community Media Network a not for profit media NGO working in Jordan and Palestine. In Jordan CMN runs Radio al Balad and AmmanNet, and in Palestine its subsidiary PenMedia (www.penmedia.ps ) which focuses on producingShara’a Simsim, the Palestinian version of Sesame Street.
Dr. Dena Assaf – Sustainable Development Expert, retired UN diplomat
Dr Dena Assaf is currently an independent consultant and researcher in International Development & Sustainability, after her recent retirement from the United Nations. Dr Assaf served with the United Nations for over 27 years in various senior leadership positions at the country, regional, and global levels. Of these leadership positions Dr Assaf served as UN Resident Coordinator in the UAE, UN Women Regional Director for the Arab States, Deputy Director of UN Development Coordination, and UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Yemen, amongst other positions which have provided her with a breadth of international development experience in the Arab region and beyond. Prior to joining the United Nations, and after the Oslo Accords, Dr Assaf was appointed as the first Director of the Palestinian Development Plan Unit under the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation which she served for 4 years while living in Gaza.
Having worked and lived in Gaza at a time when there was actual hope for the formation of a Palestinian State, while leading the Palestinian’s first independently led development plans & aid coordination mechanisms, provides Dr Assaf a unique perspective on the current situation and the future of Palestine. Dr Assaf has a PhD in Urban Design & Planning, and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Washington in the USA, and a Bachelors in Architectural Engineering from Yarmouk University in Jordan. Dr Assaf is a Palestinian resident of the West Bank in the Jenin Governorate, as well as a USA citizen.
Dominik Bartsch – Chairperson of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development (ARDD-Europe) and Former long-term senior UNHCR official and Country Director -Jordan
Dominik Bartsch is currently Chairman of the Board of the Euro/MENA Initiative. He is active as a philanthropy advisor and a member of Diplomats without Borders. He was a senior officer with UNHCR and held the position of Representative in Jordan (2020-2024), Germany (2018-2020) and India (2012- 2014). Over 34 years, he worked in major humanitarian emergencies and refugee operations, including Afghanistan, Zambia, and Kenya. During the Iraq emergency in 2015, he was assigned as the United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator. He also served in key management positions at UNHCR HQ in Geneva, and the UN HQ in New York. In 2006, he was seconded to the office of the Secretary-General, tasked with opening the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) and setting up the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF).
Edmund Ratka – Resident Representative of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Jordan Office
Edmund Ratka (born in 1983) is the Resident Representative of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Jordan since November 2020. Before this position, he was a Policy Advisor and Acting Director at the Middle East and North Africa Department at the KAS-Headquarter in Berlin. From 2015 to 2017 he worked as the Assistant Representative in the KAS Office in Tunisia.
Prior to working with KAS, Dr. Ratka has been an Associate Researcher at the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich since 2014. He also worked as a Research Fellow and Project Coordinator for German-Tunisian Cooperation at the Chair of International Politics at the University of Passau. During his academic career, Dr. Ratka was a Visiting Scholar at Science Po in Paris, the Institut francais du Proche Orient (Ifpo) in Damascus, and the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He holds a Ph.D and MA in Political Science from the University of Munich and has also studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Aix-en- Provence. His expertise includes International Relations, Comparative Politics as well as European and Middle Eastern Politics.
Adv. Lara Elborno, Board Member of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development (ARDD-Europe)
Lara Elborno is a Palestinian-American US-French qualified lawyer based in Paris. She is specialized in international arbitration and
represents individuals, entities, and states in international arbitral proceedings and before national jurisdictions in enforcement and annulment matters. Lara also maintains a robust pro-bono practice, serving as director of an asylum clinic and advising clients on international legal remedies. She recently returned from a six-month client secondment at UNHCR where she was affiliate legal counsel at the Legal Affairs Service.
Dr. Lex Takkenberg – Treasurer of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development (ARDD-Europe) and Senior Advisor on the Question of Palestine at ARDD’s Renaissance Strategic Center
A Dutch National, Dr. Lex Takkenberg is the Senior Advisor on the Question of Palestine at ARDD. From 1989 until 2019, he worked
in various field and headquarters positions with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, most recently at its Amman headquarters as the agency’s first Chief Ethics Officer. He was previously UNRWA’s General Counsel, Director of Operations, and (Deputy) Field Director in Gaza and Syria. Before joining UNRWA, he was the Legal Officer of the Dutch Refugee Council, from 1983 until 1989. A law graduate from the University of Amsterdam, where he also worked as an Academic Assistant from 1987-1989, he obtained a Doctorate in International Law from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1997 after having successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law. Oxford University Press (OUP) published a commercial edition of the dissertation in 1998; an integral Arabic translation was published by the Institute for Palestine Studies in 2003. A new version of the book – co-authored with Francesca Albanese – was published, also with OUP, in 2020.
Mr. Malik Ben Achour Board Member of ARDD-Europe and Member of the Senate of the Federal Parliament of Belgium
Malik Ben Achour was born in the French speaking part of Belgium in 1979 to a tunisian father and a belgian mother.
Father of 4 children, he has been elected for the first time in 2006 for the city council of his hometown.
In 2019, he became a federal Deputy in the chamber of representatives where he was member of the foreign affairs committee and energy committee. He was also head of the Belgian delegation at the OSCE Parlementary assembly. Since July 2024, he is member of the Senate.
Dr. Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona – Vice-Chair of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development (ARDD-Europe) and Senior Advisor on Access to Justice and Inclusive Social Protection at ARDD’s Renaissance Strategic Center (RSC)
Dr. María del Mar Logroño Narbona is an independent consultant and researcher, specializing in the political economy of social
protection, conflict, and migration in the MENA region. Since 2014, she has served as Senior Advisor to ARDD on access to justice and social protection, and currently holds the position of Vice-Chair of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development, an affiliate of ARDD.
Her work integrates policy-oriented research, program design and policy advocacy, with experience advising UN agencies, EU-funded programs, and international NGOs. She has conducted research on refugee rights, governance, and economic inequalities, with a particular focus on Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. While serving as tenure-track professor at Florida International University she was the Principal Investigator of two Social Science Research Council (SSRC-Carnegie Endowment) grants.
Dr. Logroño Narbona has published on topics related to social protection, governance, and migration and is co-author of Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA (University of Texas Press, 2015). She is currently exploring the intersections of social protection, economic governance, and conflict in the MENA region.
Her Excellency Marianne Bolger – Irish Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Marianne Bolger is currently Ambassador of Ireland to Jordan and Iraq following her arrival in Amman in August 2022. A career diplomat, she most recently served as Director General of Human Resources at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Ireland (2019-2022) which included oversight of the completion of the first ever Human Resources Strategy for the Department. Marianne has served overseas in Boston, USA (2004-2008), Sweden (2013-2015) and Greece (2017-2019). Other headquarters roles include working on Consular Issues, and planning for Ireland’s Presidency of the EU in 2013 and she has also worked on Northern Ireland and the Western Balkans. She has also worked in the Irish Department of Justice on migration-related issues. Marianne is married to Stephen and they have three children.
Dr. Maurits Berger – Board Member of the Euro-MENA Initiative for Democracy and Development (ARDD-Europe) and Professor of Islam and the West at University of Leiden
Prof Dr Maurits S. Berger, LLM, graduated in Law and Arabic Studies and is professor of Islam and the West at Leiden University and director of the Leiden Islam Academie. He teaches courses in the programs of Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and International Studies.
Prof Berger has worked as a lawyer in Amsterdam, and for seven years as a researcher and journalist in Cairo and Damascus. Prof Berger acts as advisor to governments and civil society. He is engaged in European public debates and policies regarding the Muslim world, the Middle East, and Muslims in the West. He has published extensively on Islam in Europe and on issues of Islamic law.
He is also senior research associate with the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague. He has been member of the Advisory Board for International Affairs of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2019, and member of the advisory group to the European Commission Coordinator for Combatting Anti-Muslim Hatred from 2022 to 2024. Since 2024 he is board member of the NGO Arab Renaissance for Development and Democracy – Europe (located in Brussels).
Dr. Omar Rifai – Former Jordanian Ambassador
Dr. Omar Rifai is a former Jordanian Ambassador, who joined his country’s diplomatic service in 1975. He started his career serving as a junior diplomat in Jordan’s missions in Cairo, Bern, New York, London, and Washington. In 1996, Dr. Rifai was sworn in as Ambassador and headed Jordan’s diplomatic missions to Israel, Italy, and Egypt, where he was also his country’s Permanent Representative to the Arab League in Cairo. Other positions held by him included Secretary- General of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, President of the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, Director of the Arab Affairs Division of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and a member of the Jordanian delegation to the Peace Talks with Israel in 1994. He is a graduate of Harvard and Georgetown Universities.
H.E. Pierre-Christophe Chatzisavas is the current Ambassador – Head of Delegation of the European Union to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, since September 2023
Before his tenure as Ambassador, Mr. Chatzisavas served as a Political Assistant to the Deputy Secretary-General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in charge of Peace, Security and Defence (2020-2023). Before that, he served as Senior Advisor on Peace and Security to the President of the UN General Assembly, then as Counsellor in charge of North Africa and the Middle East in the EU Delegation to the United Nations (2015-2019). Other previous assignments include working for the EU Delegation to the African Union in Addis Ababa (2010-2012) and for the EU Delegation to Chad (2007-2010). Between postings, he was based in Brussels in the EEAS Headquarters, covering at different times Mali and the Sahel region (2012-2014), Syria (2014), and the Western Balkans (2019). Mr. Chatzisavas holds an M.A. in Public Administration from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (2002). Mr. Chatzisavas is a dual national from Cyprus and France. He is married with five children.
Dr. Sana Jalassi – Senior Advisor on Women and Youth Programs at ARDD´s Renaissance Strategic Center (RSC)
Senior Advisor on Women and Youth Programs at ARDD´s Renaissance Strategic Center Senior expert on gender and youth and is based in Tunisia. She is interested in creative, transformative processes and reforms that are supportive of gender equality, youth empowerment, and entrepreneurship. She worked for close to 30 years on gender equality, youth, protection, and development management, including in post-conflict settings and protracted crises, in the Middle East and North Africa. The experience was gained in various managerial and technical positions working with civil society, public administration, and the United Nations. She holds a Medical Doctorate with a specialty in Psychiatry from the Faculty of Medicine in Tunis and two Masters of Science in Development Management and Systems Thinking from the Open University.
Adv. Samar Muhareb – Adv. Samar Muhareb, Chief Executive Director of the Arab Renaissance for Development and Democracy (ARDD) and of the Renaissance Strategic Center (RSC)
Samar Muhareb is the CEO of Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development – ARDD. With over 20 years of experience working for the development and humanitarian sector, Samar is an expert in the field of human rights, refugee affairs, humanitarian response, and women’s empowerment in Jordan and the Middle East. In addition, she actively supports initiatives focusing on political and social reforms in the Arab region. Samar holds a B.A. in Law and a master’s degree in Human Rights and Human Development from the University of Jordan.
His Excellency Serge Dickschen – Belgian Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and to the Republic of Iraq
Serge Dickschen is a career diplomat with an extensive experience in bilateral and multilateral affairs. He joined the Belgian foreign service in 1997. He is currently Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and to the Republic of Iraq (non-resident).
Prior to his current assignment, he was Consul General of Belgium to Istanbul, a position he held from 2019 until 2022. Between 2016 and 2019, he was Deputy Director of the desk East and Southeast Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with direct responsibility over Eastern Europe. This was his second assignment at Headquarters after having served between 2005 and 2008 on the Multilateral Trade desk where he was dealing with WTO matters. From 2012 to 2016 he was Head of the Economic team at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva with a more specific focus on WTO and ILO. Before that, he was Political Counsellor at the Belgian embassy in the United Kingdom where he was dealing with EU matters, Africa, Iran and Development cooperation (2008- 2012). From 2001 to 2005 he served at the Belgian Permanent representation to the EU first as spokesperson during the Belgian presidency and then as Mertens Counsellor in charge of coordinating the Belgian position in COREPER I. His first posting abroad, between 1999 and 2001, was at the Belgian embassy in Kenya where he was in charge of political and multilateral affairs (UNEP, Habitat).
He holds a Master degree in History from the University of Brussels and is fluent in French, Dutch and English, has good command of Spanish and German and basic knowledge of Turkish. Serge Dickschen is married and has a daughter.