Land-related challenges in the Arab world focus of Dubai conference

Land-related challenges in Arab countries will be the focus of the First Arab Land Conference held in Dubai from February 26 to 28.
The three-day event will address several land-related issues including reducing conflicts through land management and how to maximise the use of land and real estate for individuals, states and society as a whole.
The conference will work towards enhancing regional cooperation, capacity development and innovation in land management and real estate reform in order to promote social and economic development in the Arab region.
"Dubai has been chosen to host the conference because of its position as a unique model in real estate development," said Sultan Butti bin Mejren, director-general of Dubai Land Department. "It is also because of Dubai's pioneering activities in various fields related to sustainable development, environmental conservation, the application of the highest green building standards and maximising the use of land necessary for people's lives."
The authority is collaborating with several regional and international institutions and bodies to organise the event, including the World Bank, the Global Land Tool Network, UN-Habitat, the Arab League and the Arab Union of Surveyors.
"Dubai ranks tenth globally and the first regionally in ease of property registration surpassing many advanced economies as was reported in the World Bank's 'Doing Business Report'," Mr bin Mejren added.
The conference will include high-level ministerial meetings and technical sessions, in which research papers and presentations tackling land and property cases in Arab countries will be presented.
Key topics include access to land for sustainable business and investment, links between housing policy and land management, education, research and capacity development on land policy as well as protection of land and property rights of displaced people and refugees. Others include women, land and property rights, new technologies to support land and real estate registration systems, property valuation and taxation policies.
The conference will be open to all interested parties including those employed in the real estate sector, individuals, companies and institutions, government officials, academics, students, real estate brokers and developers.

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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.