Person

Asfour, Edmond

1926–2023

On July 20, 2023, Edmond Asfour died peacefully at home, at the age of 96. He is survived by his loving wife Brigitte Asfour, née Carton; his devoted daughters Valerie Asfour of Maryland and late husband Ted Saunders, and Marjorie Asfour-Kirkham and her husband Hall Kirkham of Massachusetts; and his grandchildren Marguerite, Charlie, Victoria and Edmond. Edmond Asfour was born in Haifa, Palestine in 1926. Following his primary education at St. Luke’s School in Haifa and secondary schooling at the Arab College in Jerusalem, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, where he also did his post-graduate and earned his DPhil. Unable to return home in 1950, he worked as an Economist with the United Nations Organization Refugee Agency in Beirut, Lebanon. Following a year as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University in 1955-56, where he wrote a book on monetary development in Syria, he worked as an Economist at the UN Headquarters in New York. Returning to Beirut in 1960, he worked, in sequence, as Chief Economist with the Middle East Airlines, UN Adviser to the Planning Board of Jordan, Associate Professor and Head of the Economic Research Institute at the American University of Beirut, and President of the Industrial Development Board of Lebanon. He left in 1969 to join the staff of the World Bank in Washington, DC where his duties included departmental Senior Economist, Program Division Chief, and leader of numerous economic missions in the countries of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Following his retirement in 1987, he was consultant to several international and private charitable organizations and served on the board as member and President of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. Edmond Asfour published several books, as well as a large number of reports and articles dealing mostly with the Middle East and North Africa.