The first BRIDGE in Saudi Arabia

This BRIDGE workshop comes as a continuation of the ongoing cooperation between the United Nations’ Department of Political Affairs represented by its Electoral Assistance Division (EAD) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Practically, this productive cooperation is based on the most recent discussions and exchange of messages between UN and OIC. These discussions aimed at explore concrete measures and identify priority areas of support to OIC where the later expressed its wish to receive electoral capacity building support on election and election observation.

This BRIDGE training represents the first partnership step in the cooperation between the UN and OIC to provide electoral assistance on election and election observation. This February workshop in Jeddah was to introduce BRIDGE and a general roundtable discussion on election observation.

The Organization for Islamic Cooperation expressed its need for cooperation on electoral assistance and electoral capacity building cooperation with UN’s Department of Political Affairs, Electoral Assistance Division through several references. In addition, recently the need was also expressed in the communication between the General Secretariat of the OIC in Jeddah and the Electoral Assistance Division of UN in New York. This event in Jeddah aimed at building the institutional capacity of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on election and election observation through BRIDGE methodology.

The facilitation team comprised three BRIDGE facilitators who participated in the preparation and delivery of this course:

1. Hassan Hussein (Lead Facilitator)

2. Ahmed A. El-Wahed (Workshop Facilitator)

The two facilitators participated in the design, preparation and implementation of the workshop. The facilitation team met before the workshop to finalize the preparation process and to ensure that all workshop-related material is ready.

Twenty two participants from the OIC Secretariat participated in the three-day training course.