Dear Friends,

Youth teams for a culture of peace are now being developed in the Arab region.

This new process was advanced during the week of February 26-March 3 2007 at the Second Annual Arab Youth Forum and Fourth Annual Arab Reform Conference which were organized and hosted by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt. Along with Jo Lofgren, who was a member of the 2005 UN Youth Advocacy Team, I was invited to take part in order to work with the new youth team for the culture of peace which has now been established at the Bibliotheca. The team includes Hagar Ibrahim who took part in the 2006 Youth Advocacy Team at United Nations (see Bulletin for November/December 2006). Among other members of the team are Ahmed Ragab Al-Kotby and Suzan Adel. Together we worked to engage other youth at the two meetings. This was productive and led to a linkage with the Arab Network of Young Peacebuilders that has been organized by Naoufal El Hammoumi from Morocco.

The work was greatly helped by an Arab translation and publication of the Midterm Civil Society Report which is now available on our website. This was produced by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina with support from the Fundacion Cultura de Paz.

The Bibliotheca Youth Team plans to design several projects at the regional level, as well as engaging other youth in Egypt. At the same time, we are all working together to ensure that Arab youth are well represented in future advocacy work in international meetings. This should help advance the base of support for the Global Youth Solidarity Fund and Programme that has been discussed in the last several Bulletins and which is described in the Youth Report on our website.

Peace,

David Adams