By Brendan Sweeney
The fifth annual meeting of the Arab-European Human Rights Dialogue will open on March 8, 2010 in Doha, Qatar, said Ali al Marri, the Chairman of Qatar’s NHRC at the NHRC building in Doha. The three-day meeting, on the theme of women’s rights, will also attempt to create a joint strategy to meet the challenges facing National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in European and Arab states.
These challenges include fulfilling NHRI mandates to promote and protect human rights in general as well as tackling the three major themes of the Arab-European Human Rights Dialogue: counter-terrorism and human rights, access to information and migration and human rights.
Established in 2006 by DIHR in conjunction with the Jordanian and Moroccan NHRIs, the Arab European Dialogue is a process designed to foster productive discourse and interaction among National Human Rights Institutions to support the development of common understanding as well the implementation of human rights in Arab countries and Europe.
Deputy Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Charlotte Flindt Pedersen, and Mu’ayyad Mehyar, who is Programme Manager of the Arab-European Human Rights Dialogue at DIHR, also addressed the press conference along with the Commissioner General of the National Centre for Human Rights of Jordan, Muhyieddeen Touq.
Mr Mehyar is looking forward to a successful meeting in March: “The ultimate goal of this meeting is to contribute to global and regional discussions and actions on how to mainstream gender equality across the Arab world and Europe both with regard to current legislation and in practice. And this goal is of paramount importance at this time. During the three days of the Dialogue no fewer than 14 NHRIs - seven each from Europe and the Arab world – along with a number of relevant EU and UN agencies will discuss how national human rights institutions in the two regions are succeeding - or failing - to promote and protect women’s rights. It is crucial that this discussion be based on international and regional instruments for the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights and their implementation in reality," he said.
At its meeting in the Hague in March this year, the Dialogue group discussed ways to enhance interaction and engagement between the two regions, while at the Arab-European Human Rights Dialogue Secretariat meeting in Amman, Jordan in July 2009 the members of the secretariat discussed how to guarantee achievement of the Dialogue’s objectives.
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