Entitled "AFKAR 3: Achievements and Perspectives", the closure ceremony of the technical assistance project in the framework of AFKAR 3 program, managed by the Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform and funded by the European Union, was held at the Movenpick Hotel in Beirut, under the patronage of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform, Dr. Inaya Ezzeddine. The event was attended by the representative of the European Union in Lebanon and Director of Operations, Governance and Security, Mr. Rein Neiland, and a number of parliamentary, political, military figures, as well as representatives of ministers, deputies and civil society organizations.

Minister Ezzeddine underlined the need to develop national frameworks to achieve the goals of AFKAR 3 program, based on the successive strategies for the development of the public administration in Lebanon. These strategies highlighted the necessity to involve civil society in discussing policies and programs through providing suggestions and recommendations.

She also referred to her experience in the Ministry of State for Administrative Reform, in which this partnership with civil society organizations was implemented based on two strategies: the first one for the digital government and the other for combating corruption, pointing out that the ministry's history witnessed several times cooperation periods with these organizations, most of them to write a set of charters, mainly the citizen’s charter, already approved by the Council of Ministers.

Dr. Ezzeddine added that AFKAR 3 program aims currently to sustain this cooperation, through the partnership platform, based on the will of the public sector and the civil society to cooperate and communicate together in a complementary way. This platform accumulated experiences to be activated in the coming steps, in order to satisfy the citizen development aspirations, regardless of his religion or region.

In his speech, Mr. Neiland stressed on the European Union continuous support to the civil society in Lebanon.

The ceremony included a panel discussion entitled "Meeting with the civil society", a meeting with AFKAR associations representatives, who spoke about their experience within the program and the achievements made during the projects implementation. They referred to the platform in stimulating cooperation and partnership between the representatives of the civil society organizations and the public sector in order to reach more important and efficient achievements.

During the event, a documentary presented AFKAR 3 major achievements, stressed on the efforts made by civil society representatives and coordinators from relevant ministries to form AFKAR platform, and to produce a training manual on dialogue between civil society and the public sector.