Manssour
Bin Mussallam
The Secretary-General
Manssour Bin Mussallam is a Saudi national currently serving as the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC). In 2016, he founded and presided – until July 2020 – the Education Relief Foundation (ERF) in Geneva, Switzerland, with the purpose of developing, promoting and incorporating a balanced and inclusive approach to education (BIE), based on the four pillars of intraculturalism, transdisciplinarity, dialecticism and contextuality.
“Our Organisation cannot, and will not, be a burial site of ideals, of dreams, of aspirations. It must and will be an incubator of bold, innovative ideas that are fashioned into existence. […] From this common space that is the OSC, we must, therefore, contribute to the construction of a new, humanistic kind of multilateralism, where the operational principle shall be: from each Member State according to their ability, and to each Member State according to their need. ”
In January 2020, during the III ForumBIE 2030 – International Summit on Balanced and Inclusive Education, held in the Republic of Djibouti, the Education Relief Foundation concluded its activities with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Balanced and Inclusive Education (UDBIE) by States from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle-East, and with the establishment of a new international intergovernmental organisation, the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC). On this occasion, and in recognition of his role in the conceptualisation of BIE as well as the drafting and outlining of the UDBIE and the OSC’s Constitutive Charter, Manssour Bin Mussallam was unanimously elected by the Founding States of the OSC as the first Secretary-General of the Organisation for a period of six (6) years. In his capacity as Secretary-General-elect, he served as ex-officio of the OSC Preparatory Committee until the Constitutive Charter’s entry into force on 18 May 2021. He took office on 6 December 2021 at the first General Assembly of the Organisation.
Manssour Bin Mussallam served in several executive and advisory positions and has contributed to numerous publications, amongst which the Global Guide of Ethics, Policies, and Practices in Balanced and Inclusive Education (ERF, 2018) and La metamorfosis de la Universidad: homenaje a Edgar Morin (ITESO, 2020). He is currently working on an anthology of critical issues for the conceptualisation and collective construction, from the South, of a third way of development.
A Third Way of Development:
Dialogues with the Secretary-General
Between September and October 2022, the Secretary-General engaged in a series of recorded dialogues on the Third Way of Development by reflecting on topics ranging from South-South cooperation to financing for development, passing by multilateralism, technology, education, culture and research, amongst others.
