American University of Beirut - Issam Fares Institute

Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs

The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) aims to harness the policy-related research of AUB's internationally respected faculty in order to achieve several goals: to raise the quality of public policy-related debate and decision-making in the Arab World and abroad, to enhance the Arab World's input into international affairs, and to enrich the quality of interaction among scholars, officials and civil society actors in the Middle East and abroad.

Research and Policy

Visiting Scholar at IFI's UN in the Arab World Martin Wählisch publishes a commentary on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), STL: The Price for Justice.

He has also published Palestine, the UN, and international law on Al Jazeera English. An unabridged version of this article can be accessed from The Palestine Chronicle, and the article in Arabic is available at Jadaliyya.
Europe's Lopsided Foreign Policy: Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinians is a new working paper published by Stuart Reigeluth, Managing Editor of REVOLVE, for IFI's UN in the Arab World program. Reigeluth argues that the Europe's nascent foreign policy provides a 'soft' buttress to the US's overarching foreign policy for the region.

News

National Public Radio (NPR) interviews IFI Director Rami Khouri on Talk of the Nation, "Can Arab League Monitors Quell Violence In Syria?". Read the interview summary and transcript.
IFI Associate Director Dr Karim Makdisi visited the United Nations as an expert to the Lebanese delegation, where he spent time meeting with Ambassador Salam and his team and attended United Nations Security Council (UNSC) deliberations, as Lebanon was presiding over the UNSC during September 2011.
Rami G. Khouri is nominated Peace Lecturer, and will deliver this year's Salem Peace Lecture at Willamette University in October, 2011. IFI's director will be the 22^nd speaker in the series, alongside Daniel Ellsberg, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott and many others.
The Issam Fares Institute has been granted official observatory status to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the world summit Conference of Parties meeting in Durban, South Africa (COP17).

Events

January 16, 2012
Co-sponsored with AUB's Office of the Provost and UN-ESCWA, "Reform & Transitions to Democracy: Global Legacies", a panel discussion with Michelle Bachelet, Former President of Chile and Executive Director of UN Women, Nickolay Mladenov, Bulgarian Foreign Minister, and Asma Jehangir, Former Chairman of the Human Rights Commission and current President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Pakistan.
January 16, 2012
Co-sponsored with AUB's Office of the Provost and UN-ESCWA,
"الإصلاح والإنتقال إلى الديمقراطية - الإسلام في الدساتير: المساواة وحقوف المواطنة" ،
a disucssion with Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Presidential Candidate for the Arab Republic of Egypt and Secretary-General of the Arab Medical Union.
Please note: This event is in Arabic only. Thank you.
January 4, 2012
The Human Rights Project of IFI's RAPP program cordially invites you to the inaugural lecture of the Human Rights Project Lecture Series, "Unfulfilled Justice in Tunisia: The Slow-motion Reforms of Justice and Security Sectors", with Nicholas Pouillard, Researcher in Political Sciences at the French Institute of the Near East (IFPO).

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