Update

SCGME Project Update

The Conflict Resolution Working Group has concluded an agreement with the Palestinian Ministry of Justice to develop two court-annexed Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) pilot programs. The programs will be funded with monies secured from the World Bank. SCG personnel made their first trip to the region for the three and a half-year project in February.

The Lebanese Conflict Resolution Network (LCRN) has recently published a unique conflict resolution manual in Arabic and an accompanying reader. The publications are the result of six months of work coordinating between authors in South Africa, Ireland, the US and Canada, followed by additional work in Lebanon to edit and publish them. Planning is underway for distributing the manuals to organizations in Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas.

With the help of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)-Syria, LCRN will be organizing and conducting conflict resolution training workshops in Syria for the first time, and will disseminate the new publications to activists from the Syrian Red Crescent who attended one of the LCRN training programs in Lebanon. LCRN is now exploring ways to take this program to Jordan.

The conflict resolution project in Gaza has recently taken a major step forward by receiving official registration as an NGO from the Palestinian National Authority. This registration marks a shift from a Washington, DC-led organization to one that is locally managed by a Palestinian director. Its official name is the Palestinian Center for Resolving Community Disputes.

The mission of the Center is to use conflict resolution and peace-building activities as tools for constructive social change. It contributes to the strengthening of civil society within the newly emerging Palestinian state by educating for and institutionalizing more constructive ways of dealing with conflict.

In December, the Civil Society Working Group completed the first phase of a program designed to streng-then transparency and accountability in Arab NGOs entitled Supporting NGO Growth and Effectiveness in the Middle East. Thirteen NGO representatives from Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian autonomous areas, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen attended training sessions in Washington, DC. The participants explored the practices of successful NGOs and the obstacles they face in such areas as fundraising, membership development, information dissemination and working with the media, network development, and organizational capacity building. In addition, they designed a table of contents for a manual to be written in Arabic for use throughout the Middle East. This unique resource will integrate key elements of transparency and accountability into the NGO context in the Arab world. In the long term, the manual will be utilized in workshops to train Arab NGO representatives in the methodologies of developing and operating successful NGOs.

The final draft of the Handbook for Citizens’ Rights will be published in March. The handbook is meant to provide Palestinians with a useful and easy-to-understand document that outlines rights presented in the Draft Law of 1997, the Basic Law, the Palestinian Constitution of 1987 and international covenants. After it is published, the next phase of the project will focus on training NGOs and governmental bodies in utilizing the handbook to both learn about and protect the rights of citizens.

The Civil Society Working Group is now based in Amman at the Regional Office of Search for Common Ground in the Middle East.

Planning is underway for the next Security Working Group meeting, which will be held in The Hague in April.

Search for Common Ground has recently published "Common Ground on Jordan - Israel - Palestine Trilateral Relations", written by a small group of Security Group participants to elucidate security and economic issues of concern to all parties. This publication is available through the Publications Department.

Search for Common Ground brings Iranian Film-makers to US

In November, Search for Common Ground with Iran, a program seeking to contribute to US-Iran reconciliation, organized a 10-day visit to the US by six of Iran’s leading women film-makers. The delegation included film producer Fereshteh Taerpour; Farimah Farjami and Niki Karimi, two of Iran’s finest actresses; directors Tahmineh Milani and Malak Djahan Khazai; and film editor Shirin Vahidi. They went to Chicago and New York where they participated in panel discussions, and engaged film audiences and the media.

Beyond challenging Americans’ misperceptions of Iran, the delegation’s visit made more likely the possibility of further American-Iranian cooperation in the field of cinema through additional exchanges, cooperative cinema school programs, and even co-productions.

For additional information, contact Mr. Brent Thompson, Program Manager, Search for Common Ground with Iran at the Search for Common Ground office in Washington, DC; e-mail bthompson@sfcg.org.