Governance Initiative Hosts Middle East Leaders at the Kennedy School

"Mishkat al-Moumin has dodged a suicide bomber that killed four of her bodyguards, run an 800-employee agency on a shoestring budget, and tackled rebuilding vast marshes that some scholars believe were the biblical Garden of Eden," wrote the Associated Press on October 8, 2004, four months after al-Moumin became head of Iraq's Ministry of Environment.

Today, hosted by the Belfer Center's Governance Initiative of the Middle East, Mishkat al-Moumin is a Kennedy School public policy student. The lawyer, women's rights' advocate, and former environmental minister is at the Kennedy School "to gain more skills through learning that will enable me to serve my country better."

The Governance Initiative is hosting two other mid-career students who-like al-Moumin-are fellows in the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management. Ghaleb Darabya is the former counselor for Political and Congressional Affairs with the Palestinian National Authority. Darabya, who was second in charge of the Palestinian Mission in Washington D.C. before coming to the Kennedy School, is here "to re-energize my abilities and widen my knowledge and scope of good governance."

Jafar Hassan is former deputy chief of the Jordanian Mission in Washington. He also led the Mission between January and August 2001 as chargé d'affaires ad interim. At the Kennedy School, he isfocusing on management skills and mechanisms for engaging the public.

"The best reform policies may not take off if the public is not successfully engaged," Hassan says.

"Our mission," said Barbara Bodine, executive director of the Governance Initiative, "is to provide resources to scholars and practitioners from the Middle East who are
part of the governance transformation for the 21^st century."