Governments and civil society discuss reforms

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 corruption and a lack of information. "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. MAQ/SZ/AD