RE: Press Release
We received the press release of Mobile Indigenous People at the IUCN V World Parks Congress. This is very impressive document which we hope will change the vision on mobile people and led to recognition of mobile people rights. The most important is that the mobile people were able to participate in World Congress and present their own needs and give recommendations to the Congress. Hope that their voices will be heard by all governments in the World. We just want to share with you and update our work since Dana conference . We still deeply involve in work with Bedouins living in Wadi Allaqi Biosphere Reserve (WABR) in Southern Eastern Desert, Egypt. In spite of relatively small population in our area, the indigenous people faced problems which are similar to all of the world. Even in the Biosphere Reserve the pressure to alter traditional land use on sedentary land use have been increased following the general government policy. The village was built for the Bedouins just on the boarder with Biosphere Reserve, but Bedouins refused to settle there and preferred to leave in the tents. We strongly encourage the local community to participate in management of WABR, support their traditional livelihood, begin programme on literacy (it is 100% illiteracy among nomads), handcraft and other things to help them to survive. Most recently, after almost three years of hard work, we succeeded to establish women NGO which link Bedouin women with educated group of women living in the city of Aswan. We believe that the gender issues in nomad community need to be highlighted. In co-operation with Glasgow University specialists, we conduct small projects which help the Bedouin women. Currently we are working to put this information on the web-site.

Sorry not to be able to write before now, we are extremely busy with field work and really had not much time for writing. We will try to be in regular contact in future.

Sincerely yours Ahmed Belal and Irina Springuel Unit of Environmental Studies and Development, South Valley University, Aswan, 81528,Egypt (19 September 2003 by Ahmed Belal and Irina Springuel Unit of Environmental Studies and Development, South Valley University, Aswan, 81528,Egypt)