More on the Sanaa Democracy Conference
same old, same old
Sanaa: The final communiqué of the Sanaa International Conference on Democracy, Political Reforms and Freedom of Expression fails to outline concrete steps for reforms in the region, participants complained.
Some participants of the two-day conference, opened by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which concluded on Monday, also criticised the final statement of the conference as a “repeat” of previous conferences that were not implemented. They described the statement as a “governmental vision”.
“The final communiqué is a governmental vision and not the participants’ vision,” said Sadeq Al Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Sudan, and a participant.
Sa’ad Eddin Ebrahim, chairman of Cairo-based Bin Khaldun Centre for Human Rights Studies, said “the final statement is a carbon copy (of) … previous conferences that came out only with statements without any follow up mechanism”.
But Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al Querbi, who chaired the concluding session, defended by saying that the recommendations were more important than the statement.
“As there is a refusal (of) the dictatorship of governments, there should be also a refusal (of) the dictatorship of the civil society, so what should be done is to refuse the dictatorship of all sides,” Al Querbi said. The conference had some 500 participants from Arab and G8 countries, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Thats a good point about implementing demcoratic proceedures in civil society.
SANAA, 27 June (IRIN) - Calls for greater cooperation between state and non-state actors to boost democratic reforms in the Middle East were made at a two-day conference in Sana’a which ended on Monday.
About 400 government officials and civil society representatives, as well as media professionals from Arab and non-Arab countries, attended the event - entitled “Sana’a conference on democracy, political reforms and freedom of expression.”
“This is a very important conference which brings together the government and civil society to debate issues of common interest and work together to carry out democratic reforms,” said Eiz Eddin al-Asabahi, Director of Yemen’s Human Rights Information and Training Centre (HRITC).
The conference was organised under the G8-created programme of Democratic Assistance Dialogue (DAD) by Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, HRITC and Italy’s No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ).
Khalil Jubarah, Director of the Lebanese Transparency Society, said that change in the Middle East was inevitable but the question was how Arab countries coped with it. Jubarah also said that two major obstacles to political and economic development were a lack of information and corruption.
“Studies have proven that corruption and a lack of access to information are two faces of the same coin,” he said. “Political repression has caused the absence of information.” A number of speakers also mentioned the state monopoly over broadcast media as a good example of the absence of transparency and real democracy.
The DAD programme was established under the G8 initiative “Partnership for progress and a common future with the region of the broader Middle East and North Africa” at a 2004 summit. Countries of the Middle East and North African region are involved along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Italy.
