My Internship with the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) in Beirut, Lebanon Took

Michael Fakhri

Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND)- Beirut, Lebanon

My internship with the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) in Beirut, Lebanon took a surprise turn before it even started. The week I was planning to get going to Beirut, a Member of Parliament was assassinated during the day along a busy coastal road in Beirut. Politically, things became very delicate in the country and no one was quite sure what lay ahead. ANND and I decided to take every week as it came to see when it might be safe for me to go to Beirut. In the mean time, ANND happened to be in Ottawa to attend a conference on trade and human rights which allowed me to meet with them and devise a work schedule. We agreed to communicate almost daily via email and arrange phone conferences when necessary.

ANND is in the midst of developing a trade and development program. It has been holding workshops consisting of government officials, experts and civil society organizations to gain a better understanding what the effects of the WTO and regional trade agreements will be upon Arab states as many Arab countries are new members or applicants. There is a dearth of knowledge as to what the social, economic and political affects of WTO membership will be. My first task was to read through the reports ANND had gathered in order to get a socio-economic sense of trade agreements in the region. This complimented my own recent research for my Masters where I examined the legal landscape of different trade agreements in the region. I was starting to get a sense of how these legal agreements may play out in the world.

My next task, as part of ANND’s advocacy mandate, was to add a legal analysis to a draft handbook ANND was working on regarding trade and development. Arab countries were signing various trade agreements and based on recent workshops there was a sense that both government bureaucrats and civil society did not have a clear idea what the affects of the agreements will be. ANND’s handbook is intended to outline the different frameworks of global trade and development and identify issues of debate for civil society actors to bring forward in their campaigns. ANND had started with a strong sense of political economy to outline what the issues were and I helped provide a legal analysis and research to outline how the current trade regimes are structured. The purpose of the handbook is to empower civil society actors with the knowledge of how, politically, economically, and legally, global and regional trade regimes were structured. Civil society actors could then devise affective campaigns to try and shape and change trade regimes to work towards development. Indeed, this compliments my own doctoral research of how to make trade work for development.

Because the political situation in Lebanon remained tenuous I wasn’t able to go to Beirut this summer. But I developed such a good working relationship with ANND that I will continue to provide them with research assistance throughout the year and will be visiting them in December. We are now exploring how to strategize ANND’s advocacy in Geneva to try and reach Arab governments in the WTO directly. The most valuable lesson from this experience was learning how to combine deep academic research alongside assessing real life affects of trade agreements in order to devise and advocacy campaign