The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature’s 10th Annual Dinner | The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature
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The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature’s 10th Annual Dinner

APN celebrated 10 years of its campaigns, which included planting more than a million and 700 trees in Jordan and Palestine, and organizing hundreds of forums and awareness workshops around the topic of food sovereignty in the Arab World, on the 21st of December 2013 at the Landmark Hotel in Amman.

The dinner was attended by more than 500 supporters, and is considered to be the biggest event of solidarity for the Million Tree Campaign. A video demonstrating the achievements of the group in the 10 years was screened at the dinner followed by scenes from the documentary The Last Shepherds of the Valley directed by Mariam Shahin.

The screening s were followed by a discussion with the director and the documentary's  leading character, Palestinian farmer Abu Saqr,   who spoke about the struggle of the Palestinian Bedouins in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley.

Farmer Ibrahim Sbeih of Bethlehem also participated in the discussion. Sbeih refused to sell his land to Israel when they offered him $ 15 million in exchange for it. The ceremony was concluded with an Arab folk dance (debkeh) performed by Al Hannouneh Society for Popular Culture.  

In the opening address, president of APN, Razan Zuaytir said that "the most important focus of APN is to increase sovereignty over our natural resources and our food through influencing agricultural and environmental policies on local, regional, and global levels. We must work against the tools of colonization that marginalize our local food production systems and force us to depend on foreign produce” She also stressed the need to institutionalize the concept of volunteering in the Arab world , and the pressing need for partnership between different human rights initiatives sharing the same aspirations.

   

A number of personalities and institutions were honored at the dinner for their role in supporting the 2nd Million Tree Campaign:Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) , Palestinian Agricultural Farmers Union (PAFU) , Land Research Center, Jordan Engineers Association , Jordan Agriculture Engineers Association, Mr. Hassan Al Jaajaa , Mr. Samih Barakat , Director Mariam Shahin , Palestinian farmer Ibrahim Sbaih , Palestinian farmer Abdul Rahim Bisharat ( Abu Saqr ) , Al Hannouneh Society for Popular Culture,  and the youngest APN volunteer, Farah Abdel Jawad.