POMED - Project on Middle East Democracy

The Project on Middle East Democracy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to examining how genuine democracies can develop in the Middle East and how the U.S. can best support that process. Through dialogue, research, and advocacy, we work to strengthen the constituency for U.S. policies that peacefully support democratic reform in the Middle East.

In 2004, a small group of graduate students at Georgetown University began meeting regularly to discuss the need for a stronger voice in Washington in support of democratic principles in the Middle East and North Africa. The group was driven by a firm belief that the advancement of democratic values is not only in the interest of the region’s citizens, but also very much in the strategic interest of the United States.

In 2006, this group formally established the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) to help fill gaps it had identified: to inform the Washington policy community on key political developments in the MENA region and the impact of U.S. policy on the prospects for genuine democratic change; to carry out sustained advocacy on behalf of greater U.S. support for democratic values; and to help broaden U.S. engagement beyond relationships with the region’s governments and narrow sets of traditional elites.

Since that time, POMED has also grown to help build the capacity of dozens of independent civil society organizations in the MENA region that wish to play the same role locally that POMED plays in Washington—of undertaking independent research and analysis, generating independent recommendations for policy, and carrying out advocacy to advance those recommendations.

POMED is based in Washington, DC and also has an office in Tunisia.