Arab countries are committed to enhancing the effectiveness of their public institutions. They are allocating resources to improve the quality of services provided to citizens. Developing job competencies for civil servants falls within that line, namely to enhance the attainment of the 2030 Development Goals and implement public policy. A group of experts in human resources management and other related specializations serving in various Arab public sector entities, have developed a Common Arab Regional Job Competencies Framework for Senior Public Servants within the Context of Agenda 2030 and Public Policy.

National mechanisms for the advancement of women in Arab countries strive to mainstream a gender perspective at all levels. To achieve this, they develop plans, strategies, initiatives and plans, as well as institutional and technical capacity-building programmes. In doing so, they take into account the concerns and needs of men and women and engage them in the preparation and implementation processes, with a view to maximizing their benefit from them.

This paper explores Iraq’s decentralization experiment, which  highlights the challenges of fundamentally overhauling the unitary state’s structure to create a federal system in post-conflict countries with strong cultural and institutional legacies of centralization.