Mona Abdeljawad

Mona Abdeljawad is the chief of party in Jordan for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Local Health System Sustainability (LHSS) Project. She has more than 20 years of experience managing development projects in health, reproductive health, development, and human rights. Her educational background is in human rights law from the University of Oxford, and she has focused on disability rights. Mona participated in drafting the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and served as the assistant secretary general of the Higher Council on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Mona has worked with Abt for the past five years and currently manages the $20 million LHSS Jordan Project. Under her leadership, the project supports the implementation of the country’s continuous professional development program and spearheads USAID’s efforts to support the Ministry of Health (MOH) in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mona has guided such initiatives as supporting the MOH’s launch of tele-counselling services and a COVID-19 training platform and training more than 13,000 Health Care Providers in the public and private sector.

Mona previously worked on the Jordan Communication, Advocacy, and Policy (JCAP) Activity, where she promoted adoption of several reproductive health  policy documents. They included the Family Planning Costed Implementation Plan (2020 – 2024) and the Midwifery Law. She served as the assistant secretary general for the Higher Council for Affairs of Persons with Disabilities and also worked as UN consultant. She spearheaded efforts to launch and adopt the Strategy on Social Work adopted by the Government of Oman and the Strategy for Persons with Disabilities adopted by the Government of Bahrain. Mona also worked with the Landmine Survivors Network and established the first peer support program for amputees in Jordan. She played a major role in the adoption by 11 Arab countries of the CRPD in 2006.

Expertise

• Policy Development and Advocacy
• Human Rights Law
• Behavioral Science
• Disability Rights
• Certified training in Disability Rights (JICA-Disability Equality Training)

Key Projects

• Abt Global – COVID -19 Response Program in Jordan
• Abt Global – Family Planning Costed Implementation Plan
• UNICEF Oman– Strategy on Social Work
• United Nations Development Programme Bahrain – Strategy on Persons with Disabilities
• Landmine Survivors Network – CRPD Advocacy

Publications

• Khayame, H., & Abdeljawad, M. (2020). Systems Thinking in Upstream Social Marketing: Using Soft Systems Methodology to Improve Midwifery Policy in Jordan. Social Marketing Quarterly, 26(2), 167-183.

Countries Served In

• Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Libya, Egypt