Nawaf Essam Ahmad Obaid (Arabic: نواف عصام احمد عبید) is a Saudi Arabian political scientist, and a former foreign policy & media advisor. He currently serves as the CEO of the Essam & Dalal OBAID Foundation (EDOF) in Geneva, a Commissioner at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) in The Hague, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Background Nawaf Obaid's family originate from Yanbu Al-Nakhal in the Medina Province (Saudi Arabia). They are distant cousins to the Moroccan royal family. He is a grandson of Sayyid Ahmad Mohammed Obaid (born 1912), one of Saudi Arabia's leading technocrats and media publishers under the Kingdom's founding monarch, King Abdulaziz. After the establishment of the Saudi Kingdom in 1932, King Abdulaziz named Sayyid Ahmad Obaid to various positions as the central authority of the emerging Saudi state began to expand over all the conquered territories of the founding monarch. Sayyid Ahmad Obaid was initially named as the communications battlefield coordinator in King Abdulaziz military campaign in the Saudi-Yemeni War that culminated in the Treaty of Taif (1934) that officially incorporated Jizan, Asir, and Najran into modern Saudi Arabia. He was then named as a senior inspector in the Ministry of Finance directly reporting to King Abdulaziz's finance minister, Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Hamdan, and dispatched to the northern and southern border regions of the Kingdom to establish customs offices at the new Saudi entry points with Yemen, Kuwait, and Iraq. He was subsequently named as the Saudi financial & customs attache to pre-independence Kuwait (before formal diplomatic ties were established), then director general of the Finance Ministry, and when the first Saudi Council of Ministers was formed in 1953, he was named the deputy minister in the newly formed Agriculture Ministry to its first minister, former Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. After more than twenty years in public service, he retired in 1955. Sayyid Ahmad Obaid is widely credited for introducing the modern printing press into the Kingdom in 1955 by launching Al Riyadh Magazine. Nawaf Obaid's eldest uncle, Taher Ahmad Obaid, served as the deputy agriculture minister during the time of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. And his another uncle, Ibrahim Ahmad Obaid, served as the deputy Post, Telephone & Telegraph (PTT) minister during the time of King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. He is also a