Samar Muhareb is the CEO of Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development – ARDD. With over 20 years of experience in 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.

Dr. Zaid Eyadat is the director of the Center of Strategic Studies in the University of Jordan, and Eyadat is a political scientist and human rights professor at the University of Jordan, with over ten years of experience in researching the democratization of the Middle East within the framework of game theory, as he has formally been trained in comparative and international politics and game theory methodology. Subsequently, his expertise lies in Middle East politics, with his current research focusing on human rights, conflict management and resolution, the democratization and politics in the Middle East, and Islamic politics. Through his membership in both governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as international institutions, he has extensively contributed to the analysis and advancement of Middle East politics within a comparative and international framework, working extensively on legislation, policies, and procedures with the Jordanian government and NGOs. Some of his recent works include “The Rationality of Political Violence: Modeling Al-Qaeda vs. the United States” “Culture and Foreign Policy: an Explanatory Model. American Foreign Policy Post 9\11 and “The Calculus of Consensus: an Alternative Path to Arab Democracy.” Currently, he is finalizing a project on Islamic theorizing on politics and the state, the theory of ethics in Islam, as well as developing an explanatory model for the Arab revolutions. Eyadat holds a bachelor’s degree in political science/Economics and Statistics and a master’s in political science from the University of Jordan. He also holds a master’s in international political science and a PhD in Political Science from the University of South California.

Magda El-Sanousi, is a developmental expert in the Higher Council for Peace in Sudan, and worked previously as the Chief of Women’s Empowerment Section at the United Nations’ Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) which she joined in July 2013 as part of the senior management team. Ms. Elsanousi led on developing strategies to enhance the role of women in the transitional period in Libya focusing mainly of the drafting of the constitution and the National Dialogue. She was Oxfam GB Country Director in Lebanon until June 2013 and has been awarded by Takreem the “Arab Woman of the Year 2012.” El- Sanousi, manages the Arab Region Gender Equality program that covers Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Yemen. El-Sanousi devoted the last 20 years to developing programmes and mobilizing resources to empower women. She worked with Oxfam in Yemen, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. She has worked on promoting gender sensitive budgets and policies in Yemen; on advocating policy change in Iraq to give widows access pensions, and on empowering women in remote villages in Egypt to vote and even stand as candidates in the parliamentary elections. ElSanousi is a graduate of Ahfad University for Women in Sudan and completed two Master’s degrees from Sussex University (U.K) in Gender and Development and Rural Development.

Professor and lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Rabat. A prominent Arab philosopher, thinker, human rights activist, diplomat and political persona. A primary figure in the fields of Islamic historical methodology and Arab political thought, he is considered to be a pioneer in issues related to state formation in the Arab world. Oumlil has extensively studied the relationship between intellectual authority and political power, the sociological pluralism and its ideological interpretations as well as the reformist trends in Arab contemporary thought. Oumlil wrote 11 books, 3 of which were translated from Arabic to French. His writings are taught throughout the major universities of the MENA region and around the world, he co-founded the Moroccan Association for Human Rights in Rabat, which he chaired until 1985, He was also a member and co-founder of the Board of Directors of the Executive Committee of the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Tunis. He headed the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Cairo. He was elected as The Secretary General to the Board of Trustees of the Arab Thought Forum. He was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Egypt and Ambassador to the Lebanese Republic. He participated in many seminars and has many works in both Arabic and French. Oumlil holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Cairo University and joined the Sorbonne to work with the French scholar Roger Arnalds with a focus on Ibn Khaldun’s methodology. He completed his doctorate in 1977.

A Mauritanian academic, thinker and professor of philosophy and studies at the Mauritanian University of Nouakchott since 1989 and a visiting professor at several Arab and international universities. Walad Abah teaches modern philosophy, philosophy of ethics, politics, religion, philosophy of law, linguistics, Islamic philosophy, philosophy of communication and media sciences. Abah also serves as a coordinator of Arab-Islamic cultural and civilizational dialogue programs, an advisor to the Supreme Council for Communication, a human development expert accredited to the United Nations, and secretary-general of the Mauritanian Society for Philosophical Studies and a writer for a weekly intellectual column for Al Etihad newspaper in the UAE since 2009. He has published a book in addition to several scientific works in addition to dozens of researches and articles published in the Arab periodicals. Ould Abah holds a PhD. in Philosophy from the University of Tunisia.

An Egyption researcher and thinker, Nafaa is currently serving as a full professor in the Political Science Department at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, where he was its president for eight years. He has worked as a visiting professor at many universities and as a lecturer in several diplomatic institutes affiliated to the foreign ministries in Egypt and a number of Arab countries. He served as Secretary General of the Arab Thought Forum, Secretary General of the Arab Society for Political Science, General Coordinator of the Egyptian Campaign Against Inheritance and then of the National Assembly for Change. He is a member of the advisory board of Al-Ahram International Journal of Politics. Nafaa won many awards including the State Encouragement Award in Political Science and the State Prize for Excellence in Social Sciences. He is a member of the General Secretariat of the Arab National Conference He has many publications: Reform of the United Nations, Arabs and UNESCO, the United Nations in half a century, Western Europe and North America, Egypt and the Arab-Israeli conflict: from inevitable conflict to impossible settlement, the European Union and Arab lessons learned, and has also published numerous studies and articles in several magazines and newspapers. He contributes regular articles in a number of Arabic newspapers He holds a BA in Political Science from the Faculty of Commerce, Alexandria University, and a PhD in Political Science from Sorbonne University, France.

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.

Ms. Francesca Albanese was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, by the Human Rights Council at its 49th session in March 2022 and has taken up her function as of 1 May 2022. Ms. Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, as well as a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for a think-tank, Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). She has widely published on the legal situation in Israel and the State of Palestine and regularly teaches and lectures on international law and forced displacement at universities in Europe and the Arab region. Ms. Albanese has also worked as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine

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.

Dr. Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona (Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007) is ARDD’s Senior Advisor on Inclusive Social Protection and Access to Justice and an independent consultant. At ARDD, she has led the organization's research on access to justice (women’s access to justice, status of the justice sector, and studies on public perceptions and experience of the justice sector in Jordan) and inclusive social protection (Education, Skills and Livelihood; Social Protection, Peace and Security; Social Protection Floors; Human and Economic Development Policies; Business and Human Rights Agenda).As an independent consultant, she has undertaken sociopolitical analysis assignments for US government agencies; gender analysis among Palestine refugees with UNRWA; life skills and citizenship education in MENA with UNICEF; analysis of public perceptions and satisfaction with local administration in the context of decentralization in Jordan (Madad Fund-AECID); and collaborated in the design of educational integration programs for refugees in Germany (DVV-VHS). Furthermore, she has served as Assistant Professor at Appalachian State University (North Carolina) and Florida International University (Miami). During her years in academia, she was the Principal Investigator of two Social Science Research Council (SSRC- Carnegie Endowment) grants.