Dr. Raed Mohammed Bin Shams, Director-General of the Bahrain Institute of Public Administration (BIPA) announced that BIPA Education and Development Senior Advisor, Dr. Sofiane Sahraoui, won “the Jose Edgardo Campos Collaborative Leadership Awards 2016”, granted by the Global Partnership on Leadership for Development (GPCL4D) and the World Bank in coordination with the United Nations. The award comes in recognition of Dr. Sahrawi’s efforts and contributions to the Middle East & North Africa Public Administration Research (MENAPAR), headed by the Kingdom of Bahrain since it was established in 2014. Dr. Bin Shams said that BIPA is proud of its cadres, who managed to achieve our wise leadership’s vision for the Kingdom of Bahrain to assume leading positions reflecting the Kingdom’s prominent role in all fields.
During his meeting with the United Nations delegation, Dr. Bin Shams added that MENAPAR is the first Arab network to focus on public administration research at the regional level. It aims to support decision making based on needs, facts and scientific research. Ever since it was established, MENAPAR associated itself with a group of the largest international organizations in public administration such as the International Institute of Administrative Science (IIAS), the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA), the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). MENAPAR has already organized three consecutive conferences in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Tunisia and Sultanate of Oman, which attracted a big number of participants from all over the world. A total of more than 450 scientific and practical research papers were presented at these conferences, and they all focused on the development of public administration in the region.
Dr. Amin Al-Sharqawi, the UN Programs Resident Coordinator, and UNDP Resident Representative, commended the efforts exerted by BIPA in the establishment of MENAPAR, as an organization that supports and adopts public administration research, making significant contributions to research literature on administrative work in the public sector. He added that MENAPAR is one of Bahrain’s key contributions to the field of public administration in the Middle East and the entire world. It is time to institutionalize and legally frame this network in recognition of the efforts of the Kingdom of Bahrain, represented by its BIPA’s cadres and the public sector in general to place the Kingdom in its well-deserved leading position.
Dr. Sofiane Sahraoui will receive the award at a presentation to be held on this occasion during the Global Partnership on Leadership for Development in Washington DC on March 6, 2017. Sahrawi is considered to be one of BIPA’s competent cadres. Since he joined the Institute, he made significant contributions to building strong strategic relations with leading organizations in the field of public administration. He also participated in the establishment of the Capacity Building Project in collaboration with the UNDP, and played a key role in hosting the Twenty Ninth International Conference on Public Administration in 2013. Dr. Sahrawi also contributed to the development of the curriculum of the master’s degree on public administration, the first professional and academic program of its kind in the region. He is also the one who proposed the idea to revive the Euro-Mediterranean Dialogues (Euro-MENA) with Bahrain’s participation as a key party to this dialogue.