Update

Update Feature: Vision 2020

Search for Common Ground, in partnership with UNESCO, has created a unique series of articles in which respected writers from the Middle East present their visions of the region in the year 2020. The series, entitled Vision 2020, is now being published simultaneously in nine newspapers across the Middle East in five languages.

Every week for eleven weeks, a different writer is presenting his or her analyses, hopes, dreams, and fears about the future. Readers in each country are therefore being exposed to a variety of points of view that reflect a common humanity and common interest in a better future.

With its regional distribution, the series is reaching audiences numbering in the millions through the Arab, Israeli, and Turkish press. In addition, the BBC’s Arabic Service is airing a parallel series of feature interviews with the authors – synchronizing their broadcasts with the release of each article.

Vision 2020 grew out of a series of roundtable forums held by the two sponsoring organizations. During the meetings, some of the Middle East’s top editors grappled with the difficulties that the region is facing and by the challenges of reporting on the conflicts and the peace processes that dominate the headlines. Vision 2020 is, in part, a response to the realization that readers across the Middle East have few opportunities to read authentic perspectives from other countries in the region.

The essay topics are as varied as the writers and their countries of origin. Palestinian human rights advocate Ali Jarbawi writes of a time when he will travel with his grandson across Palestine, Israel, Syria, and Lebanon in the span of a weekend, recounting to his young companion how it was not possible for him to make such a journey 20 years earlier. Egyptian intellectual Mohamed Sid-Ahmed writes of the next crucial point of conflagration – water – and the need to avoid conflict over this scarce resource. Iraqi intellectual and Islamic scholar Laith Kubba writes about the modernization that needs to take place to ensure that individual rights are respected and economic and political development succeeds.

Other writers include Turkish writer Murat Belge, Israeli strategic analyst Efraim Inbar, Kuwaiti intellectual Mohamed Al-Rumaihi, Jordanian journalist Rami Khouri, Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, Saudi anthropologist Mai Yamani, Nizar Abdel Kader, a retired Lebanese general, and Shimon Shamir, former Israeli ambassador to Jordan and Egypt.

The series is co-edited by veteran French journalist and diplomat Eric Rouleau and American University professor Abdul Aziz Said.

Vision 2020 is appearing in the following newspapers:

Al-Ahram (http://www.ahram.org.eg/)
Al-Quds ( http://www.alquds.com)
The Jerusalem Times
Ha'aretz (http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/)
The Star in Jordan (http://star.arabia.com/)
The Daily Star in Lebanon (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/)
As-Sabah and Le Temps in Tunisia (http://www.tunisie.com/Assabah/)
Radikal in Turkey (http://www.radikal.com.tr/)