TWO EARTH SUMMITS IN YOUR HANDS --
A RESSOURCE BOOK FOR CIVIL SOCIETY
ACTIVISTS TOWARDS WSSD 2002

World Summit Manual in ARABIC; by Carol Khouri and Hadeel-Rizq-Qazzaz; published by: Heinrich Böll Foundation, Arab Middle East Office

Publication -- The large amount of information and material available about the World Summit in English is not useful for many non-English speakers. The Arab Middle East Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation has compiled an Arabic World Summit Manual, in order to distribute it amongst civil society activists from different Arab countries.

The book presents a general overview of the historical background information and current preparations towards the WSSD 2002. It resents in simple terms the main outcomes of Rio World Summit on 1990 and other related UN conferences. It also describes the process of preparation to the World Summit on the national, regional and international levels. Is has a special emphasis of preparation in the Arab region and provides readers with further sources on information and reading materials.
The book also provides the reader with a list of main dates which helped shaping the sustainable development agenda.

The Manual is now for download to the right.

Note: Due to technical implications of the Arabic script, the files are unusual big in size. We have split the document into several portions to ease download.

From the content

Chapter 1
Sustainable Development: concept, origins and debates

Chapter 2
Global Governanceand the importance of stronger environmental governance

Chapter 3
The Rio World Summit in 1992 with a short description of the main outcomes of the summit including Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration, the Rio Conventions and the Commission on Sustainable Development. The chapter also indicates some of the main success and failure points of Rio.

Chapter 4
Other important UN conferences, such as the Vienna conference on Human Rights, Beijing Conference on Women, and Copenhagen Conference on Social Development

Chapter 5
The World Summit 2002: The preparatory process on the national, regional and international levels, the formal preparations, the role of civil society in the prepeartion process and the main players on the Arab region level.

Chapter 6
Overview over the main preparatory meetings in the Arab region and their main outcomes as well as a summary of the main points of the Arab Declaration

Chapter 7
The main events in the run up to the World Summit.

Chapter 8
Annexes, including the main activities of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a list of key web sites on the summit