Haifa Al Kaylani, AIWF Founder & Chairman, attended the Center for Mediterranean Integration’s 10th Annual Meeting which took place in Paris, France on 23 January 2019 at the invitation of Blanca Moreno-Dodson, Manager of the CMI.
The 10th CMI Annual Meeting gathered members and partners of the CMI and was chaired by Ferid Belhaj, World Bank Vice President for the MENA region. The meeting attracted high-level participation from the Center’s country members as well as its partner organizations. With the CMI entering its 10th year, the meeting was of strategic importance to discuss achievements and seek new ideas on the way forward. The discussions and videos presented highlighted the concrete results CMI has achieved throughout the year, the impact it had on its beneficiaries, and the added value it brought to its institutional partners. Members and partners of the CMI, including the Arab International Women’s Forum, used this important opportunity to reiterate their continuous support for the CMI’s work.
The CMI commenced its 10th Annual Meeting with a keynote address by the World Bank VP for The MENA region, Ferid Belhaj, who highlighted the importance of the CMI in the region as a driver for reforms and for looking at the future of the Mediterranean. Mr Belhaj also emphasized the enormous potential that lies in strengthening the connection linking the Mediterranean region to the African continent and expressed the interest of the World Bank to further explore that connection. The CMI believes that collaboration is the Mediterranean region’s best strategy to achieve integration and economic development. The meeting was also an opportunity for representatives from the Anna Lindh Foundation, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Cities Alliance, Union for the Mediterranean and Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to reaffirm their willingness to continue working with the CMI for the upcoming years.
The outstanding programme developed by the CMI as a strong enabler of partnerships and actionable knowledge in the Mediterranean was deeply valuable to AIWF and all attending, and the high-level participation of leaders from both Europe and the Arab world was pivotal to its success. Haifa Al Kaylani was delighted to participate following the decade-long link between AIWF and the World Bank and the most recent partnership of AIWF with the CMI on our successful joint initiative on Women, Water & Youth in Jordan in September 2018, which took a unique intersectional approach to three of the MENA region’s most critical development challenges – water scarcity, women’s under-representation in economic and political life, and the ongoing crisis of youth unemployment.
The AIWF Board, AIWF Global and Institutional Partners and international members look forward to co-operating again in the near future with our valued partners at the CMI and to continuing the fruitful partnership to deliver future high-impact initiatives in the region and beyond.
