Osamah Al-Henaki is the co-sherpa of the Civil Society 20 (C20), one of the eight independent engagement groups of the G20. He is also the local lead for the International Financial Architecture (IFA) working group in 2020.
Additionally, he is a director for policy design and advocacy at the King Khalid Foundation, where he co-leads the foundation’s efforts in advocating for developing social protection policies, poverty and inequality research, with an emphasis on SDG alignment, international taxation and progressive fiscal policies.
Previously, Al-Henaki worked as a diplomat for the Saudi Foreign Ministry covering European politics and bilateral relations and was trained at the UN in multilateral engagements. He also worked as an adviser for the oversight and human rights committee at the Saudi Shoura Council.
Al-Henaki attained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and government from the University of Nebraska at Omaha between 2009 and 2014. He also completed his J-PAL Executive Education in Social Policy/Program Impact Evaluation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018. In 2012, he completed his summer program in Russian-EU relations from the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He completed his summer program in European politics and economy from Utrecht University also in 2012.
During the recent C20 virtual summit, Al-Henaki said: “Taxation is not only a fiscal policy, it’s a social policy with a direct link to inequality, it’s a development policy affecting public spending on health and education, it’s even a foreign policy affecting how countries cooperate or compete to share taxing rights and combat tax evasion.”
