English عربي
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Introduction:

1-The institution believes that democracy is the best system for good governance, where the citizen can fulfill himself, practice his sovereignty and participate in self determination in a society where they live equally under the rule of law.

2-The ultimate target of the institution is to contribute to the peaceful democratic change in the Arab World, through a feasible strategy and through programs measurable and accessible.

3-     The institution is aware that the democratic change's challenges are huge, and the way is long hindered by many obstacles. However many peoples from East, West, North and South have accomplished this task. Besides, our Arab nations have started this process at different times and in different speeds. This document is an agenda with determined objectives, means and deadline. However, this document is not a substitute to what should be done by governments, parties and civil society organizations in the Arab World, but a supplementary effort to them.

4-The plan aims as representing the democracy culture as concepts and practices through education, media and volunteer work for the development of the participation in public life on the local, national and state level.

5-    The actions plan start in a précise number of Arab countries, whenever the institution finds partners from the state, private sector or civil sector.

Strategic goals:

1-     Including civic education in the educational program in all Arab schools and at all levels. The program could bear this name or any other synonym such as "citizenship" and "good governance. This step implies preparing convenient school material and training teachers and administrative members.

2-     Employing three media, visual, listening and written, to introduce democracy's values and behavior, in the different levels and dialects to suit each country for one hour per week at least under the titles "life and democracy", "accepting the other", "managing diversity" and "solving conflicts peacefully".

3-     Promoting good governance institutions through urging for supervision and participation starting from the street or the village and towards wider units arriving  to the nation as an entity. This implies encouraging voluntary organizations such as civil society organizations that accomplish this task.

4-     Building database and regional and Arab knowledge related to democracy and Human Rights with all what it implies of studies and researches in the office or on the field. This information should be available to as much citizens, students, journalists and decision makers as possible.

5-     Enlarging and enforcing the network of democracy and Human Rights activists since it doubles every five years and since it is the main infrastructure for democracy.

Programs:

Civic education: Citizenship

1-     In different periods, we found educational programs in different Arab countries known as "civic education". These programs where taught by social subjects teachers such as history, geography, sociology and philosophy. These programs focused on building the state and its institutions, but it was still limited especially when independence was still recent in many Arab countries. But now, many decades after independence it is important to consecrate citizenship as a group of rights and obligations that are being fixed in the participation to the public life at a social, cultural, economic and political  level. 

2-     The new thing here is by an educational program that is a simplification for the Human Rights Declaration (1948) along with treaties and charters that were made in the following fifty years. It is important to choose them accordingly with the educational level such as children rights for the first stage… as well as equivalent national legislations and laws. Children must me encouraged to conduct small studies on the level of the family, neighbors, friends or school to know how rights are being respected or violated and why.

3-     Another new detail is to assign children to realize simple projects of public service to improve the quality of life at school, house, street, village or city. This system is called "service learning" and incites children from a young age to voluntary work that is the main fundament of civil society.

4-     Implementing this program requires the consent of the people in charge of education: through convincing and training teachers, preparing teaching programs and psychological and material motives including competitions between schools and regions. It may be convenient to start with Qatar, then in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). And the GCC will call for the same initiative in the next meetings for the Arab Ministers of Education or for the Arab Organization for Culture and Science.

5-     Setting up children parliaments (6-12 years), young parliaments (13-17 years) in specific schools to train them on democratic skills: elections, debates, meeting management, minutes, solutions for problems and activities' programs. Such practices should be generalized to all schools in the Arab World.

6-     Setting up youth camping for university students between 18-23 to train on democracy skills and leadership. Those skills will be practiced within the administration of the camping. Such activities will be in common with other non Arab students from countries who implemented recently a democratic system such as Eastern Europe in order to exchange experiences.

7-     The institution calls the members of Arab networks who participated in the second forum for Democracy and Reform (Doha 27-29/5/2007) and others that did not participate such as teachers' orders and educational institutions, in order to contribute to the campaigns and to the preparation of executive projects for civic education programs. This would be a main criterion for the scholarships granted by the institution.

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