Turmoil hits Arab writers presence at meet: Official Tuesday, 28 June 2011 01:55

DOHA: Many Arab writers couldn’t attend the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha as result of revolutions in many countries in the region, says an official.

“With all the revolutions all over Arab world we couldn’t find enough funds from Arab organisations to support Arab journalists,” Dalia Abdel Salam (pictured), Co-Director of the seventh World Conference of Science Journalists told The Peninsula.

“We were targeting some organizations that can bring or pay Arab journalists participation, travel and accommodation, but they couldn’t because of the revolutions,” she said.

She explained that funding organizations are very important to support journalists in the Arab world and developing countries as the writers are unable to be self funded.

However, a larger number of Arab journalists would have attended the conference if it was held in Cairo as many are residing in Egypt and the expenses are less than travelling to Qatar, according to Salam.

“We should have and a lot more representatives if this conference was held in Egypt. Because, the Arab Science Journalists association is based in Cairo and like half of all the embers are Egyptians and we can support the participation by asking any organization to pay only for registration fees,” Salam said.

However, she claims that this year’s World Conference of Science Journalists was able to bring the highest number of Arab journalists together.

“For the first time we have like 50 Arab journalists, for the first time of the World Conference of the Arab Science Journalists and may be 50 percent of all the participants are coming form the developing world,” said Salam.

Journalists from countries including Egypt, Sudan Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Syria Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine are attending the conference.

“There are lots of Arabs residing in Qatar. We didn’t count these,” Salam said.

Between she explained that the conference is a good platform for the Arab journalists to build their capacity and create network with writers from other parts of the world.

Arab Science journalists in all the developing world are not able to be trained as their organisation can not afford to train them, says Salam.

“This conference is giving them the opportunity they will learn and exchange experience with science journalists from the developed world and d have contacts and the could build networks. They can get other opportunities in the future by attending eh sessions they will capacity buildings sessions they cab improve their career.”

Salam is also a board member of the Arab Science Journalists Association (ASJA), which aims to train Arab science journalists to become skilled professionals, through several seminars and wit the support of the World Federation of Science Journalists.

The Peninsula