21 September 2015 – Philippine Ambassador to Qatar Wilfredo C. Santos made a courtesy call on Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFSQ) last September 16 to explore various avenues of cooperation between the Philippine Embassy and SFSQ.
Dr. Gerd Nonneman, Dean of SFSQ, together with Professor Mehran Kamrava and Ms. Zahra Babar, Director and Associate Director for Research, respectively, of the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), warmly welcomed Ambassador Santos and the rest of his delegation – Deputy Head of Mission Gonaranao B. Musor, Attaché for Political and Economic Sorhaya P. Dilabakun, Cultural Attaché John Danilo Jiao, and Philippine Ambassador to Iran Eduardo Martin R. Menez, who is in Doha on official business.
“SFSQ could serve as an opportune venue for the Philippine Embassy to articulate Philippine foreign policy, as well as that of the ASEAN, to diversify the academic discourse on foreign service for Georgetown SFSQ students. We also recognize SFSQ’s expertise on the Middle East and the Arab region, something which the Department of Foreign Affairs could emulate,” Ambassador Santos highlighted during the meeting.
The Embassy also broached the proposal of establishing collaboration between SFSQ/CIRS and Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in terms of exchange of research, information and visits, as well as joint organization of lectures, seminars and courses across available platforms. Student-to-student exchanges between SFSQ and their Filipino counterparts, through the Diplomatic League, an initiative of the Department of Foreign Affairs-United Nations and other International Organizations office (DFA-UNIO), were also discussed.
SFSQ is the Doha satellite campus of Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. It forms part of Education City, an initiative of the Qatar Foundation whose driving force is Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the current Qatari Emir.
Established in 2005, CIRS is a research institute under SFSQ devoted to the academic study of regional and international issues through dialogue and exchange of ideas, research and scholarship, and engagement with national and international scholars, opinion-makers, practitioners, and activists. END