SCGME Project Update

In March, the Media Program held a reception hosted by the US Consul General in Jerusalem to honor the winners of the 1999 Common Ground Awards for Journalism in the Middle East. Prior to the reception, a consultative meeting of Palestinian and Israeli advisors was held to review current projects and discuss possible new initiatives. A major focus of the meeting was the Media Program’s continuing emphasis on youth and the media. The advisors also discussed the impact of satellite television and radio in the region.

In keeping with its focus on youth, the Media Program is launching a Youth Visions Essay Contest, which will be announced in several newspapers and magazines throughout the region. Through a number of specific questions, youth will be asked to submit an essay on how they envision the state of the region when they become adults.

The winning essays from each publication will be printed in each of the participating newspapers and magazines. In addition, the winning authors will be invited to participate in a ten-day journalism workshop in Jerusalem and Amman in July, where they will work with the other winners and selected aspiring young journalists to learn more about journalism and the challenge of writing in a multi-national environment.

In January, the Conflict Resolution Program and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) initiated a project that will bring peer mediation to 22 new UNRWA schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1996, the group has worked with its partner in Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Helping Resolve Community Disputes (PCHRCD), to develop, implement, and maintain peer mediation programs in 23 UNRWA middle schools and 11 Palestinian National Authority high schools in Gaza. The programs have been extremely successful: increasing students’ self esteem, encouraging them to participate actively in their school communities, and giving them the skills to resolve their own disputes as well as disputes within their families and neighborhoods.

The first phase of this peer mediation expansion initiative included training teachers’ committees from 12 schools in Gaza and 10 in the West Bank on ways to support and maintain a school peer mediation program, as well as on basic conflict resolution skills. Students from these schools were then trained as mediators and given the opportunity to play an active role in tailoring the programs to meet their own schools’ needs. The training was conducted by the PCHRCD staff, who also developed the training manual that was used and that serves as a resource for teachers wishing to support or even initiate peer mediation programs in their own schools.

The Civil Society Program completed its Rule of Law Education in Turkey project in December. Evaluations from teachers and students using the books developed for the project have been very positive. The books are now used in over twenty 7th and 8th grade classrooms throughout Turkey and plans for additional teacher training and distribution of the books are in process. Because teachers have cited the lack of primary documents as an obstacle, the Turkish training team is putting together an additional booklet containing these documents and sample articles to illustrate the lessons. Exploratory discussions are underway for launching a similar project in Jordan.

As a result of the Malta conference on New Challenges Facing Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa in November 1999, two small working groups will meet in May and June to continue efforts on sanctions and refugees.

The work on the manual for Transparency and Accountability for Arab NGOs is at the final draft stage, with editing to be completed in June. A pilot workshop will be held for NGOs in Jordan to garner feedback on the manual.

A handbook on Palestinian citizen rights is now available in English and Arabic. Following the suggestions of NGO participants, several pamphlets are being produced on each of the 13 rights covered in the handbook. For copies of the handbook, e-mail the SCGME Regional Office at .

The Security Working Group (SWG) has decided to focus on two distinct areas in the next year. Following a meeting of SCGME’s Steering Committee in Amman in March, SWG members agreed that a primary theme for the coming year should be Iran. In this context, the group agreed to address Iran’s relations with the rest of the Gulf and Iran’s relations with the wider Middle East, including the peace process. A second primary theme is the general issue of weapons of mass destruction in the region. The SWG already has a sub-group constituted for this purpose and it hopes to convene a tightly focused group to explore the continuing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region.

The SCGME Regional Office is continuing to work with Palestinian and Israeli tour operators to create a mechanism for addressing problems as they arise during the Millennium celebrations and beyond.