Arab region needs research institutes, indigenous think tanks’

The countries across the Arab region need to focus on establishing indigenous think tank or research institutes to utilise the information to address the issues or to formulate national policies with clear objectives in their respective societies, said Abdullah Khalifa Al Thawadi, member of the Council of Representatives and Chairman of Human Rights Committee.

“There is a need to promote the research perception across the society and research institutes or think tanks need to tackle issues in the national perspective and then such input should be utilized by the government or legislators in the policy-making for the benefit of the political and economic sectors,” MP Al Thawadi told Bahrain News Agency on the sidelines of the second DERASAT forum. In the Arab region, there has been no major focus on research and development as lack of funding and lackluster attitude towards research and think tanks remain key issues to address in future to keep abreast with the global shift, he added.

“The question of non-availability of funds or fewer funds continue to hamper research projects in the Arab world,” he said, adding that there is a huge gap in funding, for example, in research related projects when we compare the developed and the developing nations.

Talking about the key steps for utilising outcome of any research for the policy-making, Mr Al Thawadi highlighted three key areas including access to information for researchers followed by analysis of collected information, which according to him, should be carried out professionally and then make the end results available to the decision makers, legislators and government to come up with a national policy basis on the research findings.