Strategies Flow at International Water Seminar

March 9, 2008

Forty people were trained in a variety of water rights advocacy strategies and learned about laws regarding water in a precedent-setting seminar, The Right to Water in International Law: An International Advocacy Training held last week. SHATIL conducted the two-day event in cooperation with the Coalition of Organizations for Water Rights and the Geneva-based Center for Housing Rights and Evictions, which works on five continents. It was the first time such an event was held in Israel.

This issue is particularly relevant to the unrecognized Negev Bedouin villages, but also affects a larger gamut of organizations working in the local, national and international arenas. 
 
Ra'ed Al-Mickawi, Director of Bustan, a Negev-based Arab-Jewish organization that focuses on sustainable community action for land and people said, “We see this as an extremely high priority issue given the historic denial of water rights to Israeli Arab citizens in the Negev." Inspired by the workshop, Al-Mickawi hopes to launch a new initiative involving video documentation of water problems in the unrecognized villages in cooperation with other participating organizations.