Middle East & North Africa Initiative

The Open Society Middle East and North Africa Initiative provides grants to a wide range of projects that promote open society issues across the region. Most of these activities focus on education, rights and governance, media and information, youth, and arts and culture.

The initiative offers financial and technical support to individuals and organizations working to improve government accountability, transparency, rule of law, and human rights, as well as to those working to empower women and foster independent media and the open exchange of information. The initiative operates out of the Open Society Foundations Arab Regional Office in Amman, Jordan, and also has staff in New York and Washington, D.C. It works in close collaboration with various Open Society programs, and currently supports projects and organizations across the Middle East including in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Some of the initiative's recent activities have included helping establish a regional arts and culture fund to support music, theater, cinema, visual arts, and literature. The initiative has supported NGOs monitoring human rights violations by both Israeli and Palestinian authorities, groups in Israel that challenge discrimination and promote equitable housing and environmental conditions for Arabs and Jews, and efforts in Egypt to reduce media censorship and improve individual liberties, including freedom of religion and rights for people with mental disabilities.

The initiative has also partnered with Open Society programs to support activities that address violence against women and the impact of conflict upon women in countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories; establish and sustain youth education and debate activities in Syria; increase parental involvement in early childhood education in Nazareth; and support refugee academics from Iraq to allow them to stay in the region and continue their work.