CAIRO: For the first time, Arab youth were given the opportunity to collectively discuss pending regional issues within an official setting and present their findings and suggestions to the Arab League.
Organized by the Arab Youth Council and the Arab League, the first international meeting of Arab youth and inter-civilization dialogue covered issues like religious extremism, the role of Arab media in correcting stereotypes and the effect of racism and fanaticism on cross-cultural dialogue.
Throughout the three-day conference which ended on Aug. 14, participants from 45 countries, including 20 Arab, and representatives of youth-related organizations attended several lectures covering these topics, followed by brief discussion sessions.
The conference was held at the Cairo headquarters of Arab League marking International Youth Day on Aug. 12. The resolutions of the participants will be presented to Hany Mostafa, director of youth at the Arab League, who said, great effort was put into reaching these resolutions, they will all be presented to the youth committee and all of them will hopefully be approved and generalized to all Arab countries.
It is an honor for us that the first Arab youth conference is being held at the Arab League, said Moshira Abou Ghaly, chair of the Arab Youth Council. She added that through this conference Arab youth will be inspired to follow the successful paths taken by various participating Arab leaders.
But, in spite of the setting and the opportunity to voice their opinion to officials, the participants had some concerns about the organization.
The discussions featured several experts on the topics covered, who would first give a lecture and then allow time for questions and a discussion with the participating youth.
Some youth, however, complained of the limited time allocated for discussion.
Aya Tarek, from the Egyptian delegation, said it would be better if the discussion time was open so that it would not feel so much like a classroom lecture and we would be able to come up with more suggestions and solutions.
She added that other problems with the conference are that there was no proper introduction leading up to the conference. This resulted in members of different delegations not knowing each other or understanding how the conference works and that foreign countries had no real presence at the conference.
There were no earphones or any means of translation for foreign delegations during the conference. We stressed the fact that we should communicate with foreigners but we ve brought them here and we re not communicating properly with them, Tarek explained.
Malina El Moleu, from the Syrian delegation, said that she has learnt a great deal about different cultures from other youth delegates. But she added that perhaps if the whole conference consisted of youth, then maybe we could have worked out solutions in the end that would be better suitable for all participants.
This is the first time that I witness something like this, said Youssef Abd Allah, president of Comoros delegation, it s definitely a good thing since youth from different nationalities get to communicate with each other and benefit from the lectures being given during the conference.
Abd Allah added that the only aspect of the conference that did not appeal to him was the fact that they started the lectures with a discussion on religion, when he believes that religion should not have been mentioned.
But these discussions proved to be fruitful after all, with the participants agreeing on several resolutions. These include holding the conference annually, the youth council adopting the message of inter-civilization dialogue, Arab organizations refusing any kind of attack on Arab countries such as Palestine and Iraq, unifying media messages in all Arab countries and exchanging visits and holding meetings between the different delegations.
The idea behind the conference is really productive, and this is a good start but it can be developed further, said Dina Mohamed, from the Egyptian delegation, who added that there was also not enough publicity of the event.
Ragaa Ibrahim, president of the Syrian delegation, said that even though there was participation from Arab youth at the conference, she still would have wanted there to be more participation and discussions.
Young people have an important role in building this nation, with their minds, efforts and qualifications and through them we will be able to develop Arab countries, Ibrahim added.
