Sanaa Democracy Conference Dispute over Civil Society
At least the harassment has been named, even if it wasn’t included in the statement.
NY:
The last session of the Sana’a conference entitled “Democracy, Political Reforms and Freedom of Expression” was to change into a quarrel between some participants over points in the final statement of the conference.
Yemeni Civil Society Organizations could get a recommendation in the final statement urging the Yemeni government to “consider oppression against syndicates and civil society organizations and asking for more space of freedom and stopping interventions in their affairs.”
But the representatives of the government, ministers of foreign affairs and information protested the recommendation and said it should be omitted from the final communiqué.
Foreign minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said the recommendation includes an accusation against the government of practicing repression against civil society organizations, but situation is “totally different”, according to al-Qirbi.
Minister of information Hassan al-Lawzi interrupted and said that the recommendation based on “doubts and devil wills”.
“In this way, we will continue to rotate in a vacuum. We cannot come to good results,” said al-Lawzi.
The Tunisian repertoire of the conference Lutf Haji intervened to mitigate the Yemeni political tension over the point. He said the recommendation was not obligatory and that it was only for drawing the attention of the government over the situation of the civil society organizations.
Nevertheless, Haji intervention was refused as the Yemeni official side urged the recommendation should be omitted. Then the recommendation has been changed to be general and does not mean a specific country.
The Egyptian official side, which participated in the conference, also protested to recommendations that obligate the participating countries to reconsider the current and future political reforms in each country. Recommendations called the Arab governments to confirm their commitment to such political reforms, particularly those reforms related to civil society organizations.
The Egyptian ambassador to Sana’a stressed on adding the phrase “according to the national laws” to those recommendations.
Chairman of the Cairo-based Bin Khaldon Center for Human Rights, Saad al-Deen Ibrahim, condemned the protest of the Egyptian ambassador.
“By this you try to make the conference fail as your foreign minister did in Bahrain. But we will not allow you to do so,” said Ibrahim as speaking to the Egyptian ambassador.
The US deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs Scott Carpenter suggested generalizing the recommendations to avoid differences.
“The point of difference seems to be that related to civil society organizations. They are not obligatory points, but they convey aspirations,” said Carpenter.
Regarding the phrase “according to the national laws”, Carpenter said “we should not insist on the idea of the national laws.”
The conference was organized by Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Human Rights Information and Training Center (HRITC) and the Italy organization No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ). It was supported by the G8-created program of Democratic Assistance Dialogue (DAD), the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
About 400 government officials and civil society representatives, as well as media professionals from Middle East countries, Asia, Africa and United States of America attended the event.
