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CIVIL PILLAR IRAQWelcome to the website of CIVIL PILLAR IRAQ. Latest (updated February 24, 2008): Civil Pillar wants to stop funding Iraqi ngos with money from its Dutch partner, Hivos. But we are ready to help Iraqi NGOs write proposals to get direct funding from Hivos and other donors. A festival and conference on the historical figure of Saladdin, for which Civil Pillar would do part of the organization in Kurdistan, has been postponed. Civil Pillar has asked the Dutch government to support again a fund for independent media in Iraq. The budget for 2008 has not been decided yet. Law Project: in December 2006 Civil Pillar has published a new issue of its human rights magazine Al-Nida Al-Insani (Call to Human Duty). The extra fat issue contains interviews with judges, lawyers and other Iraqi experts concerning bad laws from the time of Saddam Hussein and American rule (April 2003-June 2004). The magazine can be downloaded on this website in PDF (click on the link left); the articles are also available in Word (click on the link left). The Law Project was supposed to continue in 2007 with two major projects: we wanted to make all decrees of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council (1968-2003) available on the internet in PDF for all Iraqi lawmakers, legal experts, judges, lawyers, interest groups and other NGOs. But as the UNDP/UNAMI has produced a CD-rom with these and other Iraqi legal texts, we would like to refer you to these UN-organizations. The second project concerned the organization of a national research conference to write a report for both the national and Kurdish parliament on the question of which laws are now unconstitutional in view of the new Iraqi and Kurdish constitutions. The Kurdish government has already suspended a series of laws and decrees of the former regime, but there are still over 4,000 left. No funding has been forthcoming for this conference and the absence of a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians during 2006 and 2007, has made us also wary of organizing the conference in the past two years. Science Journalism courses: In February 2007 Civil Pillar has organized the first one week workshop in Arbil for engineers, doctors, biologists, economists and other Iraqi scientists who want to be active in the Iraqi media as science journalists. The next course will be in Dohuk, if there is sufficient interest. For more information in Kurdish, click here . For the program of this course in English, click here . Journalism Handbook: Civil Pillar has postponed the work on the first handbook in Arabic about modern professional journalism. The book will be a study guide and reader for newspaper, radio, television, internet and magazine journalists. We would like to link the manual with a serious training program for Iraqi media which still doesnt exist. However Civil Pillar is working with International Media Support, a Danish organization training Iraqi newspaper journalist and designers. If your newspaper is interested to join this network, pls send a message in English or Arabic or Kurdish to: marebagdad@hotmail.com . We have however updated our English-Arabic and English-Kurdish dictionary for journalists. You can receive this also by email. Send a message to marebagdad@hotmail.com . Best Iraqi Websites Awards: During a conference in 2008 an Iraqi Jury will present the first annual awards for Iraqi websites, from the point of view of journalistic qualities, design, contents and other features. For a fast analysis of the research done by Civil Pillar on Iraqi websites click here for Arabic, and click here for English. Together with the newspaper Alsabah aljadeed and the Kurdish weekly Hawlati we have produced a 32-pages supplement for the Iraqi Oral History Project, an organization in Sulaymania linked with De Paul University in the USA. For this project over 8,000 Iraqis were interviewed about their life in the time of Saddams regime. You can read and download the PDF-version in Arabic on the website of alsabah aljadeed, go to: For the Kurdish version in PDF, contact the Iraqi Oral History Project, see http://www.iqhp.org/ NEW ADDRESS: Civil Pillar has moved its headquarter from Baghdad to Arbil (in Kurdish: Hawler). Our new telephone numbers are 00964-66-2565882, 00964 750 4199571 or 4205744. Email addresses have stayed the same: civilpillariraq@yahoo.com and marebagdad@hotmail.com
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