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Please join the North Africa Initiative of the JHU SAIS Foreign Policy Institute for a roundtable discussion moderated by the Former UN Senior Advisor on Libya Stephanie Williams on “Local Governance as an Essential Tool for State Building in Libya”. The roundtable discussion will be held in Arabic and English. Interpretation from Arabic to English will be provided.

What could the real devolution of power from the center to the so-called periphery look like in Libya, a rentier state which has experienced a mostly failed approach towards administrative decentralization since the 2011 uprising? Can a ground-up approach which empowers citizens and their elected representatives at the provincial and municipal level help address the absence of state and institution building in Libya? Can this community level effort help to tackle the proliferation and consolidation of armed groups in the country? We will discuss these and other topics in an open discussion which will also welcome questions from the public.

Moderator Bio

Stephanie Williams - Former UN Advisor on Libya and Non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Stephanie Williams has extensive experience in international mediation, diplomacy, and security policy. With the United Nations, she served most recently as the Special Adviser to Secretary General on Libya (2021-2022), Acting Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) (2020-2021), and as Deputy Special Representative (Political) of UNSMIL (2018-2020). Williams led the United Nations’ mediation that resulted in a nation-wide Libyan ceasefire agreement signed on October 23, 2020 and a political agreement reached on February 5, 2021 that produced Libya’s first unity government in seven years.

Williams retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2018 with the rank of Minister-Counsellor after serving as Chargé d’Affaires a.i. for the U.S. Embassy to Libya based in Tunisia. She also served as Senior Adviser on Syria (2017-2018), Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission in Iraq (2016-2017), in Jordan (2013-2015) and in Bahrain (2010-2013) in addition to tours in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Pakistan. In Washington, she served in a variety of policy jobs, including as Director of Maghreb Affairs.

Williams graduated with honours from the University of Maryland in 1987 with a double degree in Economics and Government Relations. In 1989, she earned a Master’s Degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She is a ‘Distinguished Graduate’ of the National War College, where she earned a Master’s Degree in National Security Studies in 2008. Williams is fluent in Arabic and in addition to being a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, is currently a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Keynote Speaker Bio

Mohamed Khaled Elghuel - Presidential Candidate / Former Deputy Minister

Mohamed Khaled Elghuel—Bsc. Civil Engineering (1985); Msc. Environmental Engineering (1991). Mohamed K. Elghuel has spent nearly four decades of his professional career in Libya, which involved taking on numerous technical, managerial, consultancy and strategic planning roles at both local and national levels. He also occupied senior government roles; first, as Deputy Minister in the Minister of Planning and Finance, and later on as Director of the Public Projects Authority. After leaving the public sector at the end of 2011, he started a private consultancy, specializing in Strategic Planning, Public Policy and Development for about a decade. In February 2021, he was nominated as a Prime Minister candidate to head up a new unified executive authority. Later that year in September, he was elected Chairman of the Peace and Prosperity Party, which he also cofounded. The Peace and Prosperity Party appointed him to run for the National Presidential Elections scheduled for December 2021, only for those elections to be postponed indefinitely. Mohamed Khaled Elghuel's long, diverse and illustrious career helped him to develop a coherent as well as comprehensive vision for Libya's future. His views are based on timely analyses, detailed knowledge and multi-dimensional understanding of the prevailing socioeconomic, political, geopolitical and development dynamics across Libya.

Discussant Bio

Hafed Al Ghwell - Senior Fellow and Executive Director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Prior to his current role at the Foreign Policy Institute, Hafed Al-Ghwell has had a long, notable career serving in multiple distinct roles as a consultant, advisor, fellow and scholar in world-renowned think tanks, policy institutes and advisory bodies. At the Atlantic Council, Oxford Analytica, Maxwell Stamp Inc. and Foreign Reports, to list a few, Hafed Al-Ghwell specialized in the political economies of the Middle East and North Africa countries, government affairs, international relations, geopolitics and geostrategic risks. This wealth and breadth of experience dates back to his early days at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s, followed by a career spanning nearly two decades at the World Bank where he took on multiple roles in senior leadership and ultimately as an Advisor to the Dean of the Board of Executive Directors until the end of 2015. He was also a Director of External Affairs and Communication, and part of the senior management team at the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government—in partnership with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government until 2009.

Aside from being a featured Arab voice in the Washington, D.C., policy and consultancy circuit, Hafed Al-Ghwell is also a veteran commentator and widely published columnist. His perspectives and analyses are published and televised in several languages across a wide spectrum of international media, notably the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Financial Times and Arab News, the oldest English language daily in the Arab world.

Hafed Al-Ghwell is an alumnus of George Washington University, Harvard University and Stanford University. He is also a recipient of numerous accreditations from the World Bank Group's management executive programs, focusing on public policy and global economic development.

All in-person attendees are required to bring a government-issued or employer ID for entry.

Local Governance as an Essential Tool for State Building in Libya [Zoom]