The Annual General Meetings, February 2005

Chairman Address: Dr Ismail Jalili

I would firstly like to thank you all for coming today for the AGM.  We have a lot of business to get through.

The Arab world has gone through another devastating year which has kept our minds concentrated, in the main, on the regional problems of the Middle East on the one hand, and personal fears and worries for our families, friends and colleagues on the other hand.

These events have polarised our efforts to attempts to alleviate some of the resulting social problems as witnessed with the work of Riyadh Hamdani who has co-ordinated with Human Relief to set up what has been a extremely successful operation to collect and distribute medical equipment in Iraq.

It is because of this regional emphasis that we have included for discussion the setting up of ‘chapters’ so that representatives and members from various communities can undertake similar work for their own communities

At the same time, our work for Arabs in the UK continues.  The problems are quite different for young British Arabs brought up here as opposed to those who are newly arriving.  Some, have already highlighted, particularly that of government recognition of Arabs as demonstrated in a recent study on attacks on Arabs in London that has highlighted the issues we are working on; the British Crime Survey completely excluding Arabs as a group when identifying victims. There is a wide amount of material available from government sources and the CRE on Islamaphobia but no-one acknowledges Arabophobia.  There is a preference instead to only recognise religious groupings yet, given the ongoing problems in the Middle East, there are an increasing number of attacks on Arabs in the major cities because of their nationalities.  We will continue to pursue this; The Association now has representation on the National office of Population Statistics in respect of Arabs being recognised as a separate group.  Once this is accepted it will be possible to collect real statistics on racial attacks, harassment and other important issues.  We will be holding meetings again shortly with the Metropolitan and other Police authorities.

If any of you have visited our updated website recently, you will see that a lot of work has been done on this and this work continues.  I would like to say that since being updated, we are receiving an increased number of inquiries from academics worldwide who are undertaking demographic, population and other studies into Arabs, Arab media, and Arab concerns in various European countries and we have been delighted to help with this.  We currently have a request from Loughborough University who are looking to interview several groups of Arabs settled in the UK and young British Arabs, each group being 4-5 in number, about their experiences and feelings of being Arabs in the UK.  If  anyone is interested would they please let me know.

As an Association, we continue to be short of workers, purely because our members and supporters are all involved in their own work and careers and we do recognise that. It would benefit us enormously if we had the resources to fund an Information Officer to follow up on the many media aspects of the work and lobbying.  Until such time as we have funding, this is not possible. However, we do need positive support from our members for the work we are doing and this can be in the form of feedback either personally or on our website, donations to keep the work going and for anyone who has some time, and are interested in a particular element of our work, or has new ideas that they want to pursue, to let us know. 

If we are unable as Arabs to come together and work for a better life for our own people here, then there is very little hope of achieving this in the Arab World. 

top of the page

The Annual Report of the National Association of British Arabs for 2004

Following the last AGM, NABA’s activities have evolved in line with the manpower available. 

The lack of manpower and the personal commitments of many council members which precludes them from taking an active role, has meant that the work undertaken has relied on a small number of committed workers.  Accordingly, the activities have been split into two halves; the pursuance of the original remit as far as Arabs in Britain are concerned, and charitable work.

1. Canvassing for recognition of the Arabs in the UK and their civil rights:

The Chair and General Secretary (Dr Ismail Jalili), the secretary (Mrs Maureen Jalili) and the information officer (Dr Anthony McRoy) addressed NABA’s main UK commitments as follows:-

a.  Meetings with organisations/politicians

NABA arranged a meeting with the Home Office Minister Fiona McTaggart with representatives from other Arab organisations.

Other meetings were held with organisations including:-

NAFTE, (National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education)
New Scotland Yard;
Alan Duncan (shadow Home Office Minister)

The purpose of these meetings was to bring to the authorities concerns over representation of Arabs and problems they were facing, either through work and recruitment, education or civil rights.  This has been particularly important given mistreatment and harassment of Arabs, and particularly given the changes brought in by the previous Home Secretary David Blunket in powers of arrest.

Several MPs including Clare Short, Lord Redesdale, Colin Breed. 

These meetings stressed the international situation in the Arab world and NABA’s concerns.

In addition to several met at the various meetings where issues of the Arab community in the UK were raised to increase awareness.

b.  Work relating to recognition of Arabs as an ethnic group

A study was prepared on the Arab population in the UK, which was submitted to the Office for Population and census (copy available online at the NABA website or in hard copy).

Chairman joined the Advisory Working Committee of the Office of Population and Statistics.  The prime purpose of this is to look at the question of ethnic minorities to be documented in the 2011 census.  First inaugural meeting met in November.

Letters and press releases on critical Arab issues, supporting pro-Arab actions, sending condolences, letters of support, etc.

2.  Relief Work  

Relief work which has been the focus of the Secretary to the Northern Group (Dr Riyadh Hamdani).

Following the last meeting of NABA held in Manchester, Dr Hamdani, in liaison with the Human Relief Foundation in the UK, set up a network of doctors and other medical contacts throughout the UK who worked at collecting supplies of unused medical equipment, (wheelchairs, hospital beds, prosthetics etc) and were successful in collecting items to the value of £2 M.   All of these have been transported to and dispersed to hospitals throughout Iraq.  

This has been an enormously successful venture and Dr Hamdani has already started work to extend the scheme to Palestine and Egypt.

3.  Invitations to and recognition of NABA

NABA has become well recognised in the British political arena and was invited to several functions including:-

NHDU Forum; This was a Prison Services function for a wider community participation held at  Wansdworth Prison;

Conservative Muslim Forum; this was the Inaugural meeting of a new group within the Conservative Party;

Ethnic minorities Liberal Democrats Forum where we were asked to brief the AGM with our activates and role in the UK.

Arab Ambassadors dinner in Brighton during the Labour Party Conference

4.  NABA plays a pivotal role in promoting cooperation of the various Arab organisation in the UK represented by the Arab Communities Forum and its evolution to a modified forum called the British Arabs Forum which been registered as a company limited by a guarantee.

3. Reference point for information and interviews on Arab communities issues in the UK. Two academics from the US (Caroline Nigel and Kavita Rajagopalan) held interviews with NABA’s chairman about the Arab communities in the UK.  Some of this work has since been published and some is in the pipeline; details will appear on NABA’s website.   NABA also introduced them to other members of the Arab community in the UK and gave factual support on academic work to researcher from India from Mohammed Nasir and his professor.

5. Although invitations to the Arab National Congress and Arab National Islamic Congresses are on personal basis, NABA’s chairman was invited to be members of both congresses. (Dr Jalili’s speech at the NIC in Beirut is attached).

6.  Contribution to art and culture by supporting the Lyre of Ur project.

7. Newsletters: We have sent periodic electronic newsletters on various issues relying on a massive personally owned email list. These included open letter to politicians, speeches, appeals, condolences, media alerts etc (please refer to the website). We have also received a phenomenal numbers of electronic correspondence and written communication from all over the world

8.  NABA Website:  After a year of neglect and faults developed in the site, we invested some money and a lot of personal efforts to repair and update the site. This has become a very valuable source of information and is gradually evolving to become a major reference site on information on Diaspora Arabs and other Arab related issues in addition to NABA’s activities and achievements. We have had an enormous response complementing the modified website.

The future:

1.  We are forced to work within the available resources and manpower available. In addition, the mood of the Arabs not only in the UK but worldwide is to focus on regional Arab issues because of the magnitude of the challenges the Arab world is increasingly facing. We are obliged to submit to the will of our members and community and start giving more time on these matters without undervaluing the need to address the welfare of the community in the UK. I propose the setting up of regional chapters including the Palestinian Chapter, the Iraqi Chapter and any other chapter deemed to be necessary.   This will particularly benefit the charitable work being undertaken and Dr Hamdani has already commenced work on this.

2.  Allocating more time and resources to the only effective mean of publicity and public relations we have with is our website as it has proven that publishing hardcopy newsletter is costly, time consuming and requires a collective input which is lacking.

3.  Collaborating with other organisations to appoint a shared secretary/clerk/administrator to take some of the bulk of work and help in registration NABA as a company with limited guarantee.

4.   Modifying the constitution to take into account the limitations we are facing. These include subscriptions, membership types and quorum required. In addition it is important to stress the role of the chair and executive role with executive decision-making.

I K Jalili

Secretary General
February 2005  

top of the page

1. The formation of charitable and regional Chapters: These are
     (a) Relief Chapter
     (b) Palestine Chapter
     (c) Iraq Chapter
     (d) Sudan Chapter

2.The election of a new Council.

top of the page