Middle East Partnership Initiative

The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a U.S. State Department program that supports organizations and individuals in their efforts to promote political, economic, and social reform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

MEPI provides direct support to both international and MENA-based NGOs, educational institutions, local governments and private businesses to implement projects designed to directly engage and invest in the people of the MENA region. Through these partnerships, MEPI helps build the capacity of those that serve as the region’s most successful agents of change - local civil society and business leaders, activists, scholars, students, and lawmakers.

MEPI-supported projects cover a wide range of topics from voter education programs in Egypt, judicial reform seminars in the Persian Gulf, women’s literacy campaigns in Yemen, and a region-wide partnership program between U.S. and Middle Eastern universities. Two of MEPI’s most prominent programs are its annual Student Leaders program that brings students from all over the region to participate in a summer-long seminar, and its Middle East Entrepreneur Training program, which assists aspiring young business and civil society leaders.

MEPI’s budget has been steadily increasing. After initially receiving $29 million, its budget in FY2005 was $75 million. As of 2009, MEPI has granted roughly $530 million to over 600 projects in 17 different countries, including the Palestinian Territories. In support of this Bush Administration's signature program, President Obama continued his support for MEPI and received a requested increase of $86 million from Congress targeted towards the Governing Justly and Democratically (GJD) objective. This program develops civil society in key locations in volatile regions covered by the State Department's Bureau of Near East Affairs(NEA).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, serving under President George W. Bush, announced the creation of MEPI in a December 2002 speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, declaring that the goal of MEPI was to create “a long-term prospect” for reform, “not something that is going to be done in one year or five years.”. MEPI was designed to target areas not served by USAID, the United States’ main foreign aid and development program. Initially dependent on USAID in support of its mission, MEPI has come into its own and targets short-term programs addressing political change in order for USAID longer-term development programs to be successful.

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