Ziyad Baroud

Ziyad Baroud (زياد بارود ; born 29 April 1970) is a French Lebanese civil servant and civil society activist.

Ziyad Baroud was born on 29 April 1970 in Jeita, Keserwan into Maronite family of Selim and Antoinette (née Salem).

The first of two children, Baroud and his younger sister Maha were brought up in a middle-class civil household with no political ancestry, where both parents were high school teachers; their father a senior grade mathematics teacher and their mother an Arabic literature teacher.

The Doha negotiations resulted in the long-awaited election of General Michel Sleiman as President of the Lebanese Republic and the formation of the 70th national unity government led by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, composed of 30 ministers distributed among the majority (16 ministers), the opposition (11 ministers) and the president (3 ministers).

Ziyad Baroud, who had been engaged in serious national struggles for democratization for over 15 years, stood out as a professional and committed civil society activist.

Newly elected President Michel Sleiman consequently named Ziyad Baroud as Minister of Interior and Municipalities.

Baroud completed his high school education at Collège Saint Joseph – Antoura des Pères Lazaristes from which he graduated in 1988.

He then attended the Faculty of Law at Saint Joseph University in Beirut from which he earned his Master's Degree in Law.

He was admitted to the Beirut Bar Association in 1993.

From 1993 to 1996, Baroud worked as a trainee lawyer in Beirut in the cabinet of Ibrahim Najjar, who later served as minister of justice in the same government as Baroud.

While working in the office of Najjar, Baroud contributed along with a handful of judges and fellow lawyers to the drafting of a legal monthly supplement in An-Nahar "Houqouq Annas" (Ar: حقوق الناس) or "People's Rights", the first of its kind, designed to familiarize people with judiciary rights and jargon and promote the implementation and modernization of Lebanese laws with the aim of bringing more justice to society.

At the same time, Baroud was pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Paris X in Paris, France, a school that also graduated Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin among other influential personalities.

Baroud is currently preparing his doctoral thesis on the subject of "Decentralization in Lebanon after the Taif Agreement", a topic that is one of his main subjects of expertise as well as one of the major lobbying points of his political agenda.

Baroud held a number of academic posts as lecturer in two prestigious universities in Lebanon: His alma mater Université Saint Joseph (USJ) and Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik (USEK).

Furthermore, he sits today on the Board of Trustees of Notre Dame University.

With time, Baroud became more and more involved in key public actions that took him to the forefront of national, high-profile political activism, largely due to his expertise on many impending national topics, notably electoral law, decentralization and the constitution.

Electoral reform

Ziyad Baroud is one of the staunchest and most active experts on electoral law reform in Lebanon.

In March 1996, Baroud founded along with other activists the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE), an independent, nonprofit organization specialized in the study of elections and electoral laws' impact on democracy.

The subject of elections and electoral law reform will become another forte of Ziyad Baroud's life and political agenda.

Baroud also consulted with the UNDP on local governance and decentralization from 2001 to 2008.

He is currently the chairman of the "Governmental Committee of Decentralization" (Ar: اللجنة الخاصة باللامركزية), knowing that the topic of decentralization happens to be his Doctorate Thesis subject.

In 2004, Baroud was elected Secretary General of LADE to lead a group of more than 1,300 domestic electoral observers during the 2005 elections.

In 2005–2006, he was commissioned by the Prime Minister of the Republic Fuad Siniora along with eleven others to serve on a blue-ribbon commission headed by Former Minister Fouad Boutros to propose a draft for electoral law reform, this commission came to be familiarly known as the "Boutros Commission".

Decentralization

Baroud worked as a research associate at the "Lebanese Center for Policy Studies", a Beirut-based think tank of which he is a board member today.

LCPS aims to provide researched, politically neutral guidelines to serve policymaking.

In 2006, he was chosen to serve as a board member of the Lebanese chapter of Transparency International (LTA).

He served as minister of interior and municipalities, considered to be one of the most powerful positions in the country, from 2008 to 2011 for two consecutive cabinets in both Fuad Siniora and Saad Hariri's governments.

Baroud is one of the few political personalities who is appreciated by both ends of the rivaled Lebanese political clan and thus, subsequently holds good esteem with many of the personas across the complex and contentious Lebanese political spectrum.

An attorney by formation and practice, Baroud is an expert on issues of decentralization and electoral law reform.

He is known to abstain from engaging in feudal politics, and to focus instead on building the Lebanese civil society and Lebanese civil institutions.

During his mandate as minister of interior, Baroud was credited for pushing forward a culture of responsibility and openness where he made himself easily accessible to all Lebanese citizens eager to share complaints and/or opinions, and was widely present in day-to-day activities of his subordinates.

His actions resulted in an unpremeditated cultivation of a very attractive public image that he still possesses today.

Following the deadly clashes of May 2008, on 21 May 2008, figures from both the opposition and majority signed the Doha Agreement under the auspices of Qatar's foreign minister and prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, finally diffusing an 18-month crisis.

Baroud was also credited with overseeing Lebanon's best-managed round of elections to date in 2009, which he orchestrated in one day instead of the conventional four weekends, a record in Lebanese history.

This has earned him the First Prize of the prestigious United Nations Public Service Award where Lebanon was ranked first among 400 government administrations from all over the world by the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN).

Ziyad Baroud has been granted several awards to date, in 2010 he was the recipient of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Charles T. Manatt Democracy Award, which recognizes extraordinary efforts to advance electoral participation and democratic values.

Baroud is also the recipient of the distinction of the French Legion of Honor or Légion d'Honneur, the highest decoration in France, ranking him as Chevalier, and of the Grand Cross of the Spanish Order of Civil Merit (Sp: Orden del Mérito Civil) rewarded for "extraordinary service for the benefit of Spain".

On 26 May 2011, Baroud resigned from office as minister of interior and municipalities in Saad Hariri's government after an inter-party conflict developed between the Internal Security Forces and the Ministry of Telecommunications in Lebanon.