{"id":3357,"date":"2018-05-11T09:42:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T08:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/?p=3357"},"modified":"2018-05-30T08:35:56","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T07:35:56","slug":"bsis-phd-researcher-octavius-pinkard-recent-work-in-beirut-with-the-national-democratic-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/2018\/05\/11\/bsis-phd-researcher-octavius-pinkard-recent-work-in-beirut-with-the-national-democratic-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"BSIS PhD researcher Octavius Pinkard recent work in Beirut with the National Democratic Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Octavius Pinkard at a polling station in Beirut, as part of the National Democratic Institute delegation monitoring and assessing the election that took place on Sunday 6th May.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Octavius Pinkard, a PhD Researcher at the University of Kent, was recently\u00a0in Lebanon as part of a small\u00a0team of experts fielded led by the National Democratic Institute, a Washington-based organization founded and led by\u00a0former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.\u00a0The delegation arrived in Beirut on 02 May, and was\u00a0deployed throughout the country to monitor and assess the parliamentary election that took\u00a0place on Sunday, 06 May. The\u00a0group was\u00a0comprised of government officials and regional experts drawn from 13 countries. It included\u00a0current and former members of parliament from Sweden, Jordan, Morocco, Canada, and the United Kingdom.\u00a0The delegation was led by\u00a0Peter MacKay, who previously served as Canada’s\u00a0Minister of Foreign Affairs (2006-2007) and\u00a0Minister of National\u00a0Defense (2007-2013);\u00a0by Mohamed Ouzzine, the Deputy Speaker of the Moroccan Parliament;\u00a0and by Birgitta Ohlsson, former Swedish Minister of European Affairs.\u00a0Originally scheduled for June 2013, the election was\u00a0postponed multiple times as a result of dynamics related to the conflict in neighboring Syria, and due to the inability of domestic leaders to reach a consensus on electoral and political reform. The last national election in Lebanon was held in 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Octavius was invited\u00a0to join the mission because of his expertise on Lebanon and his extensive experience\u00a0with the\u00a0Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security body. His past assignments have included missions to Belarus, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and multiple deployments to Moldova and Kyrgyzstan.\u00a0He was seconded to each mission\u00a0by\u00a0the US Department of State.\u00a0Octavius’ research on conflict-generated diasporas\u00a0examines\u00a0Lebanese communities in the United States and Senegal. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Researcher at both\u00a0SOAS (University of London), and Lebanese American University in Beirut. He has also been interviewed by\u00a0BBC News for his perspective on security in Lebanon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The preliminary statement by the National Democratic Institute may be found here:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Preliminary Statement (English)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Preliminary Statement (Arabic)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Delegation of the National Democratic Institute meeting with Bahia Hariri, reelected to Parliament on Sunday. Bahia Hariri is sister of Rafik Hariri, the assassinated former Prime Minister; and aunt of Saad Hariri, the current Prime Minister.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Octavius Pinkard, a PhD Researcher at the University of Kent, was recently\u00a0in Lebanon as part of a small\u00a0team of experts fielded led by the National … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51111,"featured_media":3413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6598,23266,124,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3403,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions\/3403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}