 Good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are. This is our webinar on sharing and exchange the land information ecosystem in the Arab region. Before I introduce myself, please be aware that we have simultaneous translation to Arabic. You can see this option at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom screen. You may switch between English. It says there French, but it's in fact into Arabic. I feel free to choose the language you feel most comfortable with. My name is Romy Sato and I coordinate the network of researchers in Landportal Foundation. The Landportal Foundation is a Dutch nonprofit organization that works towards improving access to land-related data and information to all. We provide a global free and open data platform to help make invisible data visible and available to everyone. And for this we collaborate with a large network of international, regional and local organizations across the world. I'm here today to facilitate this great webinar about land information ecosystem in the Arab region, which takes place just a few days before the second Arab Land Conference. So if you have not yet registered to this conference, please do so. You will quickly find this information on the internet. This conference will take place between the 22nd and 24th of February in Cairo, but with all sessions also streamed online. But going back to our webinar on land information ecosystem, some of you might be wondering what is this information ecosystem? So I prepared a few words about it because I know that sometimes this information of this term, ecosystem, land and information ecosystem may not be very clear to everyone. So if you think about the term ecosystem in biology, it refers to a community of living organisms and non-living organisms, things interacting as a system. And with data and information is very much the same. We mean a large group of data and information which interact with each other or to use the correct term which operates with each other. But they can only operate with each other if they meet certain requirements, the most important being that they are open. This makes them accessible to everyone and adaptable. And this is very powerful to secure land tenure for people, particularly to vulnerable groups. So the objective of this webinar today is precisely to discuss how land stakeholders in the Arab region can build such a land information ecosystem. And we will learn a little bit more into this now when I said that this can be powerful to secure land tenure. Laura is in a few minutes going to give you a presentation to explore a little bit more these terms. So today we want to explore how can we work in partnership to increase access to information in a way that it's beneficial for all. We also want to identify gaps in land information in the region and how to bridge these gaps. For example, inland administration but also in terms of information for capacity development and other areas. Finally, we want to explore simple steps that we can all commit to help sharing knowledge in a systematic and open way. If you are interested in this topic as well, I take quickly a few words just to remind you that we will have a master class during the second Arab land conference. It will take place next week, next Wednesday 24th of February at 4.30 in the afternoon in Cairo local time. Now let me introduce you to our panelists. And I just start by saying that we had a few changes and one of our panelists, Ombretta Tempra, cannot be here unfortunately today, but Evelyn also from UN Habitat was kind enough to accept and stepping in for Ombretta. Let me start by introducing Laura Mediolaro and I will ask my colleagues please if they can put up the PowerPoint presentation with some slides where you can see our colleagues there in the slides. I don't know if we can have that Neil. Anyways, let me start by saying Laura, she is our team leader in the Land Portal Foundation. Laura is a specialist in information and knowledge management for development with a passion for open data with more than 15 years of experience in the sector. Laura has a substantial program management experience during the last 10 years. She has been then leading our team in Land Portal. Our next panelist is Dina Nagip. Dina is an urban planning researcher. Oh, now we are going to have our slides for you so you can follow a bit easier. So this is Laura, you will see her again shortly. And I introduce you to Dina Nagip now. She is an urban planning researcher in the Housing and Building National Research Center in Cairo. Dina has 18 years of experience as an urban planner and she is currently a PhD candidate on Urban Design and Community Development at Cairo University. Dina has already performed many assignments in providing technical assistance and capacity building in urban planning. Our next panelist, Evelin, who is stepping in for Ombreta today. Sorry, can I interrupt you for a few seconds? There are two persons at least asking for guidance about Arabic language, access to Arabic language. Yes, we see some... Sorry for interrupting. For you, if you need assistance, please take a look at the bottom of your screen. It's either at the bottom or at the top of the chat. You will see an option to switch. It says switch to French, but it is indeed Arabic. So you can still click in there. It says French, but when you go to that room, you will hear the Arabic translation. I hope you can find that. Otherwise, I would also ask my colleagues who are supporting me in the background, and you can also type in a message to my colleague, Neil or Stacy, and they will be able to help you as well if you can type in a message to them in the chat, please. Okay, so continuing. We have Evelin with us today, and Evelin is a land governance, gender monitoring and evaluation expert. She has over 17 years of experience working with national, regional and international organizations. And Evelin currently coordinates the Global Land Indicator Initiative and serves as gender focal point for GLTN at UN Habitat. Our next panelist, Rafiq. Thanks for intervening to help our participants here. Rafiq Kodi maybe is probably very known to most of you or many of you. He is a senior consultant to the Arab Land Initiative. Rafiq has a PhD in development economics and large experience with land tenure issues. He was for 15 years in charge of the European and international relations of the order of French surveyors. And he is also one of the principal authors of the GLTN book on women and land in the Muslim world. Next, we have, last but not least, we have Brahet Garib. He is co-founder and CEO of Seeds Jordan. It's a youth organization that works to increase youth's active participation in development processes such as achieving the SDGs. He is a member in the International Land Coalition Council and also a member in ILC Regional Committee for Amenham. Riot is a social entrepreneur and holds a PhD in business management. Okay, now we go and tell you a little bit how we will run this webinar. So the webinar is being recorded both in English and Arabic and they will be available for consultation on the Land Portal website on our YouTube channel as well. We will start with a short presentation by Laura and she will tell you a little bit more about open data and its importance for land and social change. After that, I'm going to then have this chat with our panelists. It will be through three rounds of questions and after these three rounds of questions to the panelists, we will open for questions and answers by you. We should have at least 30 minutes for that. For posing your questions, please use as much as possible the Q&A feature which you can also find at the bottom of your zoom interface, the zoom screen you will find the Q&A there. You may also want to pose your questions in the chat so the other participants can see it but it's primarily if you can use the Q&A it's better for my colleagues who are then going to help me to pick up your questions so we can address them to the panelists. Okay, before we go any further we were just curious about yourselves and I'm going to release now two quick polls you will see in your screen because we are curious to know more about you where you based and which sector do you represent. So I'm going to start, oh Neil, please if you can help me with that because I see Neil that my colleague is the host now of our Zoom meeting. If you can release the first poll and we can see then where our participants are based. There you go you should be able to see it and if you can click in the first question in which region are you based we'll give a few seconds for that and the second question okay, ah yeah unfortunately we are having some ah the panelists cannot vote okay thanks Neil can you please release the results I think it's possible for everyone to see Neil thank you very much so we see now that we have a majority coming or actually there is a draw here 33% coming from the Near East and North Africa and also with the same amount of people we have from Europe and Central Asia so which sector do you represent we have a large majority of people coming from international organizations with 29% but we also have some participants from the private sector thank you very much now with no further delay I will pass now the word to Laura thank you Romy thank you for having me here and a great opportunity to make a short intervention I wanted to stimulate for the discussion with my presentation by answering mainly to two questions why is it important to share data openly in order to improve policy and decision making and the second question is why data needs to become public good and I hope this answering these questions will stimulate for the discussion later so everybody is aware that we and have the perception that we live in a data revolution so land information is increasingly being created, collected, stored, ensured as data and new technologies are helping us to capture, to monitor, to analyze land information but the amount of data has increased exponentially over the last two decades but the question is can we work with the data and the evidence that we have to improve land governance let me use a few slides to aid my presentation is mainly to support me explaining this concept, can you see my slides perfect so we like to refer to this pyramid here which represents the relationship between data, information, knowledge and wisdom so in the context of this pyramid data represent kind of a stimuli, signals that are of no use until they are presented in a usable or relevant form so data is a type of raw material capturing to data sets or tables or satellite sensors that is of no use until it is made open and free from their own data sets and then become information so to become information you need to add value to data and meaning so this for instance can be represented by the traditional research analysis or by the fact that you that you link data together so combining for instance data from different data sets to create more context more understanding so from there to become knowledge data has to have a concrete application and action need to be attached to that so for example using the data the information to assess the impact of a certain land project and learning from it and feedback into the project or using the data to build a story or an infographic which can become a support tool for a particular policy process so this is the way for information to become knowledge and from there to become wisdom is more a matter of social economic environmental viable conditions as well as well as individual preferences so these I'm not sure I was able to change this line move to the next one let's go here so this is just an example of yeah sorry it's an example of an ecosystem in the agriculture sector where you can see there are different sectors the private sector NGOs and government interacting overlying each other and where people play different roles there are data collectors researchers analyzers tech developers product centers informiaries so different people playing different roles within the ecosystem let's go more in detail of what is how what are the components of an information ecosystem we like to compare the ecosystem to a city with a complex system of elements that interact together data and information this is the building block of the ecosystem this can be compared to cars in a city allowing information to go from one place to another to another to another to another to another destination similar to data they need to reach the right people at the right time to be useful then we have people actors each of them have their unique role to play within the ecosystem certain types of data that requires to understand and analyze satellite data we need data scientists or GIS experts and then they can pass their information to other people who can build on their products and do not have to necessarily have the same skills I mean everybody can bring their own skills and capacities into the mix then we have an important element of the ecosystem the attitude to share, collaborate, learn provide feedback similar to the traffic in a city you need to be considerate about other people or other cars moving you need to follow the rules for the traffic to be smooth and the collaborative and considerate level of awareness is needed in an information ecosystem is very important so collaboration is necessary across sectors and countries to avoid duplications of efforts to work more efficiently but also the right attitude towards learning from the information what is this information this data telling us and also providing feedback feedback is absolutely important to improve the quality of the information and the data so this attitude of sharing sharing knowledge, sharing data and sharing feedback and finally the infrastructure similar to cars in a city that needs bridges that need roads to move from one place to another to reach their destination also data needs its own infrastructure to be able to flow and reach the destination in the information science these roads are the standards the metadata the data models all those good practices that pertain to a good data management so the land port has been working hard and in collaboration with many other partners and organizations over the last 10 years to build up a healthy and democratic information ecosystem in the land sector mainly in free ways building a culture of information sharing and collaboration building a better data infrastructure and capacity in the sector for data management publishing and sharing so building a culture of information sharing and collaboration often we hear people saying I'm afraid that by sharing data is not safe because or for instance my data is put out of context or I don't know how people will use my data or for instance I lose the control over my data or things like the number of visits to website will decrease and so on so because of this way of thinking very often data stays closed in silos is shared across a small number of people and organizations publications do not get the right visibility they are not visible they are not used very unlikely to generate any impact of course we understand that some data can be misused data privacy is a value that we have a strong attention to but open data is not about personal data and there is an incredible value that can derive from sharing data openly such as transparency ability but also improving monitoring avoiding duplication of efforts increasing efficiency and ultimately getting better results which is what everybody is looking for the second point building an infrastructure does a good infrastructure exist in the land sector well there is a lot to work to improve and overcome certain important gaps and for that we've been building tools and services for data sharing and building capacity we should we encourage people thinking do I usually create metadata when I publish my publication or my data do I consider the license if you do not put a license automatically your publication is copyright nobody can use it or do I use do I publish the data with the right format well think that's for instance publishing a data table into a pdf right nobody can use it but if you publish your data table as a csvoo or an excel then somebody else can pick up and do something with it so just consider this few elements is very important so when it is legally open technically open then we have a functional ecosystem and data becomes public good data has to be public good so the first step to improve the ecosystem is mapping it mapping the ecosystem is about identifying who is doing what what are the main gaps what are the opportunities or the challenges to address data accessibility is there any opportunity for collaboration and linking the dots so mapping the ecosystem help us visualizing it like in a map and understanding it and also understand how data is published accessed and shared so just to conclude we all play different roles within this ecosystem and now land are at the point of global attention because of the SDGs there is a lot of initiatives collecting and monitoring land data so it is a unique opportunity to use this momentum around land issues to collaborate and make information and data more open and accessible to all get more coordinated and work more effectively together so this is just work together and we can help you making this more coordinated and structured to improve the information ecosystem in the Arab region for everybody to work for a better land governance thank you Romi back to you thank you Laura very interesting I think it sets very well for us to continue this conversation on open data having in mind it's not about privacy interfering with privacy or having in mind of course the concerns that open data is not going to affect and actually cause negative impact on vulnerable groups at least that's the idea and I just wanted to remind everyone again to feel free to at any point to pose your questions preferably in the Q&A but you can also post it here in the chat well now we go to our round of questions and I would like to start by asking a question to Dina so Dina in your research but also in conducting training that's also an area that you have a lot of experience training related to land issues how do you see the most critical information gaps so if we're talking about capacity development it acts as a main tool in order to build the missing knowledge and to assist into building the existing knowledge and to transforming it into practical tools so it aims to identify the missing key aspects and to increase the capacity of different actors this includes land related stakeholders, practitioners local community in terms of advocacy for instance so it also aims to strengthen the land related institutions and to develop new tools for sustainable good governance if we're talking today particularly on land governance we aim to fill the most urgent gaps related to all land functions and the continuum of land forms reflecting the degree of security from a social perspective of course according to the customary and the social norms so there are various challenging facing the governments in the region so there is an urgent need to integrate the institutional and the legal statutory systems along with the customary systems and the local actors local authorities and the users as well or the beneficiaries so there are parties or actors that can act as mediators in between to lead the discussion on local level including the community and local actors in order to consider them in the decision making process so there are land related issues that impacts the security of land tenure, equity and land governance so the land related deficiencies are the lack of participatory decision making overlapping claims and conflicting of interests also the low level of transparency and maybe the growing levels of corruption or the existing ones as well lack of local community participation in the dialogue and identifying their priorities according to their perceptions and the lack of vision and sustainable development and most of this all for all governments the most challenging part is the inability of the current system the existing one to deal with the rapid change related to the land access and land use so if I just want to focus on the most if you are just wanting to benefit the vulnerable groups so we have unequal access discrimination practices based on of course on the social context in the region and the environment so one of them is the gender discrimination for women access to land as a key issue for security the ten year security and for the economic development and of course the empowerment will impact as a key main key issue that guarantees achieving an inclusive economic growth thank you very much and maybe Rafiq can now elaborate a little bit also on what you just mentioned this lack of vision the inability to deal with ongoing changes and so rapid changes in the land systems my question to Rafiq is on promoting more open data more access to information what are the particular complexities of the Arab context Rafiq you are mute so sorry about that I think that we have with the Arab world several problems with geographic information first of all we have a tradition of mapping being the being done or produced exclusively by military so we have a problem there it has become a tradition that the state has the monopoly of creating maps and we have also a big centralization largely centralized systems which do not allow people citizens or NGOs or whoever would like to work to do part of the job in terms of mapping and we know that today of course everybody can make some mapping with devices that can be acquired at a reasonable price so so I think that this tradition of centralism and also of secrecy because of course the Arab world is also confronted to security problems that everybody hears about here and there creates a special atmosphere which is not favorable to setting up the whole system of geographic information in the area on the other hand it is well known unfortunately that the research departments in the Arab world does not spend much money on much investment in terms of research and development which is part of the component an important component to understand what is going on and what is not going on in our area so my understanding or my conclusion from that is that we have to build capacities of course building capacity is a fundamental issue but we also have to build confidence and to build confidence is a matter which requires that all the people who know how to deal with these issues of mapping get together try to build a kind of club association call it whatever you want to try to coordinate discuss technicalities identify the limits of this category the other category so all actors should meet in a certain point great thank you Rafik I think this is also a good point to bridge to my next question to Raed which is also along the ways of what do you see in your experience working with the youth Rafik just mentions now we have to build capacity but we also have to build confidence and that there is not much investment in research and development how does that affect the people that you work with and in their capacity to use information for securing land rights yeah thank you first of all thank you for giving me opportunity to show you this very nice and very important meeting and I actually I want to speak in Arabic because there's a lot of people here in Arabic and we are talking about Arab region right we would just have a small issue here because unless I have some of my colleagues here supporting me but unfortunately I don't understand Arabic we don't have the translation from English into Arabic we have English to Arabic but not Arabic to English I would please ask you to stick if you can to English yeah thank you follow Dr. Rafiq about what he mentioned and I want to say from youth perspective that the issue is like the issue in Arabic in general and in Jordan maybe because I'm from Jordan I can speak about it it's like mosaic you know it's a big mosaic through a way there's a lot of information there's a lot of experience but actually we need to see the big image of the big frame maybe I can share my experience with when we start start looking to collect information about strategy because we said we want to build a strategy for land use in Jordan we found everyone here have a lot of information but at the same time they are sitting like an island everyone have his own information all his information in a closed box not allowed to anyone from outside to go there and we spent like two months just to convince them to come and sit in the same table and as Rafiq said many people know nothing about land but it's know nothing because there's a lot of information that we can't reach this information I'm not going to add more than what Rafiq said there's a different type of use for land in Jordan but yes essentially maybe I have time please you have another example another example just three weeks ago the real court decided to support youth to go to the land to use land for farming because they said they want to promote food security and they found stereotype that all land in Jordan belong to the government but they found no it's not only 40% belong to the government that's it no striking data no striking information about it lack of information lack of information very good right I think this is also a very good bridge to Evelyn I want to bring you now here in our round in terms of we are talking exactly right gave a good example about information information that it's not easily accessible or the conditions do not enable you to access this information and what do you see what are the difficulties encountered in accessing information and why do you think that some institutions they do not want to share data how does that affect the governance of tenure in your experience thanks Romy I hope you can hear me clearly thank you participants who joined this meeting this webinar thanks Romy for that question so in terms of difficulties that I think Laura's presentation was able to allude to some of the challenge or the difficulties but also from the other colleagues so first it's about resource constraint both in terms of technical capacity to be able to collect the correct information the financial challenge most of the institutions that are mandated to collect data often do not really enjoy the budget requirements from government and also even for the international maybe donors and communities don't necessarily channel a lot of resources for data or like no Evelyn I think we are losing you a little bit I don't know if it's due to your speak or information Evelyn sorry if you can hear me well we are losing you a little bit I don't know if it's due to the bandwidth so in this case it makes it very institutions to collect data and be able to relate this hello you can hear me now yes we can hear you now yes yeah so the resource challenges both in terms of budget but also for those institutions that have done very well in collecting data and information you find also in terms of the level of desegregation be it on women rights or be it on indigenous communities rights that data is not necessarily available and it's often taken from a universal point of view in terms of who owns for example the land and even data that is available you find a form of administrative point of view it's very skilled either to high productive agricultural land or high lands or not necessarily you know data is not available on a system or very limited also data on this oh Evelyn sorry we are missing you again what community really feel all good and connected okay now it's good again yes yes thank you sorry for that no problem just to highlight a few more points another aspect is also the political issue which also links directly to the policy environment in which data is you know capacity for collecting that data and be able to use it and sharing it then there are also challenges to do with the different legal dualism of tenure regimes for a communal tenure related or a communal land tenure system most of this land is not necessarily documented so it's difficult even to know the other then there are serious overlapping institutional mandates when it comes to data and information gathering where you find for example ministry of environment collecting data ministry of land collecting data and so forth then there are also questions on data protection issues which also links to the whole question on the policy related aspects and also community vulnerabilities and particularly access data from you know for them to be able to finalize on their transfer of land or to even facilitate you know a land transaction which also makes it very difficult for them to operate another point on the on why this institution don't necessarily want to share there's the question of secrecy as Rafiq has mentioned that land and particularly within the boundaries of a country is considered a highly aware of the boundaries and so forth so any ability to open it up you know presents either security threats or you know opening up to maybe sources or exposure that they may not necessarily be very friendly about also having land information and data times also you know reignite historical aspects or questions or queries which some of the governments or institutions may not necessarily be very friendly about whether or not this is not what is historically correct so there are also fears in that front then the data gathering and presentation of time also is not accessible to most of the communities or most of the community groups be it women be it indigenous communities so data is available for example if you are presented with a very few people would be able to interpret what this really means so in terms of presentation of this information I am sorry I have to cut you here so we can move and I am sure you there will be also more time to elaborate further on this point and anyways I think there is also a very rich amount of information you mentioned none political will the lack of resources in institutions also to collect this data but you also made several interesting points about accessibility now that it's not just about being available but also being accessible to the public and also being accessible and also being accessible to the communities that will do exactly with this when it's accessible or not information might be available or not accessible or may not even be available I wanted to also release a yet another poll to see the participants now your vision your experience about information how do you see the state of information in the Arab region Neil again in your screen the questions with a few options there you are so how do you see the state of land information in the Arab region first option is information is available accessible and open good very good scenario the second is information is available easy to access find but not open for me to reuse it the third case is information is available but not easy to access or to find open and the fourth situation is it they simply not enough information now it's not available not accessible not open give a few minutes for you to respond a few seconds sorry minutes no good Neil if you can please and we will see what is most of your experience is not accessible not open not accessible not open most of your experience is wow a large majority 80% feels that it's not enough information is available accessible or open followed by information is not is available but not easily accessible or open to be reused good now we exactly we go into how can we what steps can we make to bridge these gaps I will ask you now all panelists to be quite brief because we are reaching to our limit here in terms of time so if you can be very short in your next answers Dina how can we transform available data into knowledge into research for the cases where data is available now with actors spearheading this initiative and if you have success stories precisely that data has become available to the audience first I have to agree unfortunately to the Paul of course there's no enough information and it's at the end it's according to the eye of the beholder who is seeing the perception of whom which actor is seeing this information and from which point of view this is I think what Eberlin was trying to say even for donors or international organizations when they offer some fun and also what Riyadh was just saying acting from different or separate organizations as different islands or separate islands so scientific knowledge is displayed through literature review and some research as models scenarios mathematical equations academic papers that usually are not comprehended with different actors like practitioners or users so we have this massive knowledge and this knowledge of how to shape the future in terms of shaping and developing a vision with this information so some of the success stories I can mention I can name one in Dubai Dubai Land Department recently had incorporation with the real state Dubai real-state institution and the regulatory authority had built and a program for disseminating information through the market through a professional and scientific training also they the government of the Dubai media office had announced in May 2020 that they had successfully introduced a new registration system for real-state transactions which allows the real-state owners to remotely register their properties from abroad so this is allowed for their story from Jordan the Department of Land and Surveys has the second highest score in the land administration quality index for the Middle East and North Africa region in the business report issued in 2020 by the World Bank and this is kind of paradox because Riyadh on the local level or an active actor doesn't feel the same way as what has been displayed or what has been measured so this is kind of paradox that we have to highlight on the difference between what's in the research or in the index and in the measurements and what people are feeling on ground also Oman they have this 2040 strategy that integrates research in the general innovation planning system and developing a capacity development plan to strengthen the capacity of governmental stuff in addition to preparing training sessions for the private technical service providers Dina, thank you we have to cut you here sorry for that but just so we can also allow some other participants maybe they can also join us giving some of these examples that can you also share how can we ensure that information that is already available is accessed and used if you also have some examples to share with us I don't really have any examples but I have some recommendations and I have some proposals to make I think that following what I have said a few minutes before I think that people coming from different specialties and different professions have to meet the people who work on data on geographic information should work I think that they should work on the data that has been done in more than 20 European countries that is a national association of people working on geographic information this is something that is very important that it can be the place where people would exchange experiences identify their capacities their limits both technical and economic and political as well I think this is something that exists all over Europe in all European countries I don't understand why in the Arab countries we don't have such such experiences and such associations we have tried once to launch it to launch the idea in one country but it has appeared to be very problematic to have an association on anything so I mean so I mean this is a big big democratic problem but it is also a problem related to the essence of development of capacity the capacity development and the fact that the utmost necessity to get all the stakeholders to work and coordinate together to try to upgrade the whole situation in the country is that the Arab countries except for Morocco which is doing a very interesting job and very particular in the Arab world except for all the other countries are not present in the international forums or very weakly present in the international forum and this is something that I really regret in that yeah and I think that's a good point Rafiq I will turn now actually to right in the panel a variety when some of the idea suggestions that Rafiq were most mentioning do you see that the youth can be better prepared to maybe take forward some of these suggestions yeah but first give me just opportunity to just to make a short comment about what Dina said yes yes department of land and survey they are doing a good job But in their own island, if I look to the bigger frame, I will say there's maybe four or five land-use strategy in Jordan. For example, if I go to the Minister of Agriculture, they have their own strategy. I went to the Land Survey, Department of Lands and Survey. They have their own, the same in Akaba, a private zone. So we don't have one strategy for land use. This is the point. I want to go to your question. All of us agree that the future of development in Arab world has a pace. If they want to go to very far in the future, they have to pace on youth. Because they are the source of the future. They are the source of development. Youth never, ever be alone in development. Always they are the main source for the development. Always I said, what's the challenge for youth? What's the problem for youth to go forward? I said, they have to empower them. When I say empower them, in general. And I can go deeper, empower them in technology, empower them about knowledge, empower them about how to handle with nature, with everything. So in this situation, we say we are going to reach very sustained development, very strong countries. If we said, yes, the youth, they can change. I remember when we started going to the land, we said we have to start with refugees who are coming from Syria. And most of our youth, they don't have any experience with this issue. So we reach many places, as I mentioned at the beginning. And then directly, we have established our own non-formal refugee camp at north of Jordan. Now we are handling with 2,050 people in this refugee camp. And I think the youth are doing a great job, because they transfer the knowledge from being only refugees to be as an expert. They move the experience and knowledge from Syria to Jordan. The shape of farming totally different with the refugees starting work as a farmer. So knowledge is traveling. I go back to knowledge and empowering youth. Always we have to focus in this point. Thank you, Ryad. And I would like now to exactly address this to Evelyn in terms of the opportunities for regional partners to cooperate in building this information ecosystem in the Arab context. Oh, Evelyn, you are muted. Yeah, thank you. Yes, there are a lot of opportunities for this collaboration to happen in the Arab region. I think one, we can look at this clearly within the context of the Arab land initiative, where you inhabit at GLTN and the Arab land initiative partners such as BMZ, we have the GAZ, we have NELGA. I have been working together really to explore opportunities to strengthen capacity of national statistical organization to be able to work directly with the civil society organizations in a way that brings the information closer, brings the capacities closer, and building really the professional connection, the professionalism around land data and information, professionals and experts to connect, to be able to learn, to be able to share. And I think this is also a one way of promoting across regional learning and sharing opportunities, which we must be able to take advantage of. And this webinar also locate this kind of an opportunity really to get to know even who is doing what, where those opportunities and how can we be able to share. Another opportunity is also to build on existing land data and information infrastructure. It's very difficult, for example, particularly working with government to introduce new initiative of measures, but we can be able to build on existing data and information infrastructure. We can be able to better those infrastructure in terms of new technologies, promoting maybe new tools that are able to bring this, collect this data and information and be able to present them in a more accessible way. And we can hinge and hook this or anchor this on the SDG related efforts that we have specific, for example, indicators and land related targets, which as a region also has its own global responsibility to really demonstrate its capacity and be able to really showcase what is happening from a land point of view. So the political goodwill is equally very important in terms of promoting investment on land data and information and ensuring that there's a robust ecosystem of data and information that supports its own country level or national level policy decision and making things really moving. So it is an opportunity that we cannot be able to miss, but we also are urging the government and the practitioners to take lead and ensure that also they get the support from government and other external partners to make this possible. So yes, there are opportunities we can take advantage of. Thank you, Evelyn. We now go to the last round and actually what I would like to do is slightly different maybe from what I had, we had in mind just because also I'm conscious of the time and to leave enough time for our discussion. I would like to propose very quickly to go on a round that you can tell me panelists, what is needed? If you have to tell donors what they need to be supporting, what would you be telling them to support? And what can be the best practices that we as land tenure professionals in this field could adopt ourselves? If you can give me quickly a few ideas around these two questions, let me start by Dina, please. So I think we need different actors meeting with drums. So multidisciplinary studies, collaboration between different experts in the region and the members of different disciplinaries. And I think that we need the strong awareness and raising within the government institutions and the local authorities and advisors as well. Also the inclusion of land practitioners in order to bridge the gaps between the research and the practice on ground. Also to fill the emerging gaps regarding the land systems in the region, the statutory ones and supporting the decision making by participating more actors in the dialogue and pushing more investments in the experimental research and evaluation of the existing already initiatives developed programs to measure and monitor the progress of these programs and to guarantee the foreseen sustainability. So I think that it's a self transformation beginning with a systematic attempt to overcome the limitations of the present knowledge base and to perceive as unable to address the crucial issues in the region. Thank you, Dina. Rafiq, over to you. What would be your pitching to your pitch to donors? My suggestion would be to start relatively small and to give interest to secondary cities, for instance. When donors come, they usually support the capital. They usually in central government. But all the small or the mid-sized cities also need geographic information. They need to strengthen their municipalities and they need to have specific tools for them. I think that launching some kind of pilot experiences with crowd mapping, for instance, allowing training people to work, to produce their own maps for a small city or for a neighborhood in a mid-sized city would be something very interesting and very interesting. Well, we could draw a lot of lessons out of such an experience and including showing that it is not something that is a danger for the security of the country. So I mean... Great. Thank you very much, Rafiq. Rafiq, over to you. Right, you are muted. Please, unmute yourself. Yeah, thank you for your question. Because it's very important for me now because right now we have a very important mission for seeds because we invited all stakeholders who are working in land and they have honest land strategy. We, to sit together and publish one land strategy in Jordan. And I think we are doing a very good job because we invited, for example, Department of Land Survey, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Environment, Minister of Everywhere, who have a strategy. We have now, we have one committee, they are working in one strategy for land use in Jordan. So I think donors, they will find a very good place to invest, if I call it as invest in this information to go forward again. And that this information will be now available, published in Jordan. Exactly, we will launch this strategy in Jalaf. Great, at the Global Land Forum upcoming. Great, thank you. Riot, Evelyn, over to you, please. What could be the best practice we can adopt? And please. Yes. Yeah, so I think first of all is to appreciate that the Arab region has really major potential. It has the people, it has the expertise and it has opportunities to really mobilize its resources as a region, technically and financially, to be able to really do or promote locally led initiative, regional led initiative. And this can be led by partners, by the different institutions, by the civil society, by the government institution or the private sector in the region and partners, the academia, the researcher. So what I would pitch with the donors and asking them to do is less foster, less promote locally led or regionally led initiatives that really enhance their capacity, that be able to provide those capacities, that strengthen those capacities in terms of data and information. And some of this example, I made one of the core example that as I mentioned earlier is the Arab land initiative that GLTN and the Arab land partners have been working on, which has been able to bring these opportunities to, in terms of capacity for national institutions, it's been also able to work on them, research opportunities for young people, even investing in land and building their capacity to be able to really, you know, profile what are the emerging issues and be able to own those challenges as a region. And I think I believe there are a lot of strength and opportunities only that we've not had maybe opportunities to profile them more. And I think those of us who've been in these spaces on working on land governance globally, we may not have seen really the beauty and the strength of the Arab region the way we need to see it and maybe be able to show, know where those gaps are. So importantly is that the opportunity we have to invest and have data and information from the Arab region cannot be an external agenda. It cannot be delivered by external experts. We have to really get it done and led by the internal or regional partners and institutions and individual experts who are brought together to be able to marshal this and be able to deliver this package. In terms of also resources, I think donors can be able to put in resources and dedicate those in terms of presenting that opportunities, but also connecting this region, the Arab region with other regions where there's been also a lot of experiences. There'll be cross-fertilization and sharing of knowledge and information. Great. Thank you, Evelyn. A very rich menu for donors. Laura, I would like to also just quickly go over to you to also give your recommendations for us as land experts or practitioners in this field. What could be your recommendations for us to help building this infrastructure, this information infrastructure? I think many of the panelists have already pointed this out greatly and what it comes out very loudly here, from all of you, is that we really need to collaborate more between, yes, international experts and local experts. Why not? And across regions to learn from each other to share best practices, to improve the capacity of who is already doing a good job, but maybe is not aware of the latest tools and services and can take advantage of those to improve dramatically the work that they're already doing. Just to break those barriers, those boxes, not that Raed was referring to many times, the islands, they do not work. I mean, we cannot work in this way if we keep each of us in an island. We really need to break those barriers and let information flow. As Evelyn pointed out, the main custodians of data is government and I think it is widely recognized now that there is a capacity gap there in government. They need to understand, first of all, they need to understand that opening land is not a threat, but it is an opportunity for growth, for economic development and also to improve development, to have all the sectors in their own countries growing and developing. And civil society has a strong role to play too. So working together, collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, I would say. Thank you, Ronny. Thank you, Laura. Thank you very much. And exactly now, coming out of our islands here of penalties, moderations and the support team, I want to start with our Q&A questions and answers. If you are leaving right now, please do fill out our survey to let us know how are you enjoying this webinar so far. My colleagues are going to post this link to a quick survey in the chat here. For those of you still staying with us, I'm going to start with the first question and that is about the role of artificial intelligence. So what is the role of artificial intelligence in the process of data? And how to apply on what is known as a smart agriculture? So if, and the person is asking whether your organization's other players can play a role in filling this gap between the North and South countries and bringing this to the Arab countries. Does anyone feel like responding to this question of artificial intelligence? I have some experience with that. I'm looking a bit into the Laura graphic or Dina. Well, I think I'm not an expert in artificial intelligence, but I know that it's started to be explored in most of, in the Western countries. But what I want to stress here is that we need to start from the foundations, right? So the information need to be there first available and open, otherwise you cannot use even with artificial intelligence or similar sophisticated tools. It's not really possible to use, to make any applications or any use if the information is not openly available. So yeah, it's being used more and more for applications that can also be useful, can have, can be useful. Why not in the land sector as well? But if the data is not open. Yeah, cannot use a graphic. Do you also want to respond to that? Yes, I would like to say first of all that 90% of the agricultural plots are less than one, less than or small size, probably less than one hectare in the Arab area. So I mean, you cannot invest in artificial intelligence for such a small properties or holdings. Maybe for the big ones, which are the property of well, capitalistic owners, et cetera, maybe, I don't know. But they probably know better what to do. However, concerning the small holdings, I think it is not really an issue for the time being. Because they don't have the means to invest in such tools. Okay, thank you. Right, would you like to also respond to that? Yes, as I said, I believe in youth. So just empower youth and give opportunity to just to show what they have. You know, as I said, who could produce a lot of games by mobile, he can transfer the knowledge to be like intelligent things. I don't know how to call it, but they can do more than what we expect. Always youth have a step ahead more than us. Great, thank you. I have a next question here. Maybe we can also, I'd like to point out to Dina. So do you think that access can also include training the public on how to understand and use data? And in that case, how that can be achievable? Now, if the public doesn't have the capability of using data, open data, then its accessibility of being a public good is questionable. I think both Dina and maybe Laura can also answer these questions. Dina, please. Yes, so it's not only about one direction approach. So awareness is one direction from the one who provides the information for the public or for whoever the beneficial part. But it's also the other way around the dialogue. Dialogue is very important. Dialogue is intended to bring the hidden glimpses and unquestioned assumptions and to unfold them into the methodologies on which the analysis should focus on. So it's both linked to each other. We need to work on both directions and not only advocacy, not only awareness to make sure. So if you see or we measure the, analyze the attributes of the people who are the users at the end or the owners of the lands. So you'll find that there are some built on what information they already have, the pre-existing information. They maybe have mistaken information already. And there is the herd, the herd following everybody. So we need to leverage their understanding by the awareness and also include the questions and the way of thinking and how their perceptions through dialogue in order to maintain the momentum of decision-making in this process. So what I mean is we have to use those multiple approaches together. I fully agree with Dina if I may, Rami, that the information sharing is not a one-way exercise but I was referring nearly to feedback and learning. And also in this kind of ecosystem there are different people with different roles. So who is producing information into having in mind who is the target of these information. So for instance, language can become a big barrier if I create information in English for people that do not speak English. So translating a piece of information can be crucial if I want to channel a sort of message to a certain group of stakeholders and translating complex database with rows and columns into a story that people can understand has the same value in channeling the message. But this can happen in a two-way conversation as Dina pointed out. Thank you, Laura. I have an interesting question here. I would like to point that to Evelyn. So it's Mulba, he's from the government specialist in USA in Liberia and he is asking, can any of the speakers share their experience in how the availability of data has contributed to countering corruption or how can lack of data has led to massive corruption in the land sector? Evelyn, I don't know if you have any experience to share that or also Rafiq. Yeah, thank you. I may not want to mention maybe specific cases say because of reason for ability to authenticate some of the information, but I would want to put it this way that lack of data or in land information really makes the systems susceptible to corruption and manipulation. There are serious cases and maybe I can quote a number of local, maybe I'm Kenyan. So in our Kenyan context, we have what we call the Ndungu land report. And in this report, there were serious allegations of massive land taken from communities, land that was taken from minority or marginalized communities that it was grabbed by powerful individuals and even religious institution. So if we are able to really trace this land back, it means we have the ability to take it back also and use it for public good and maybe give it to or share it out with the communities that really need this land. We've also had initiative, for example, by a number of government institutions, not just in Kenya, but also other countries to be able to formulate. Oh, Evelyn, you were suddenly muted. Oh, sorry, sorry for that. So if you take an example also of Kenya in our land registries, the government here through the Ministry of Land has done very well to digitize the land information system and the registries, so to speak. This has made it so easy for somebody to make a search in terms of the land they want to purchase, whether it's owned by someone else, the history behind it. And that has reduced significantly, not just on the cost, but people playing around with the hard copies of data and files, which most of them even disappear. And not just in terms of land information within the registries and maybe other institutions, but also in terms of access to justice. In our courts, we have cases that have been there for over 50 years or even 37 years. And a person who is putting in or a woman from a rural community and somebody who is poor and maybe vulnerable for whatever reasons, they are not able to pursue justice because they lack the ability to be able to retrieve this information at a good time to really push for their case and seek justice. So corruption really doesn't necessarily operate within the land institution, but also for justice institution and other institutions that are important for them to be able to access this information. So yes, there's a strong correlation between access to land data and information and corruption and transparency related question and how this really promotes accountability and security of tenure for all, including whoever really needs justice. Thank you. Thank you, Evelyn. And I hope also, as was well answered, Rafiq, I don't know if you want to add any words to that. Yes, just a few words. I think that the complexity and opacity are favorable to corruption. The more we have opacity and complexity, the more we'll have corruption. If through mapping and we have more transparency in the mapping and in the processes, et cetera, then we will have less corruption. Nobody can ever dream of having no corruption at all, maybe in Sweden or in other countries, but not in the Arab countries, I guess, unfortunately, but at least not for the time being. But I mean, the trend should be based upon transparency and simplification as much as possible. Thank you. Laura, I see you have your hand raised. Yeah, I just wanted to remind that we hold a very interesting webinar a few weeks ago on how OpenDita can help contract corruption in the land sector, which indeed it looks one of the most corrupted sectors and increased transparency. Well, our colleagues from Transparency International, they have a corruption barometer that measure corruption perception index, that measure corruption, how people perceived corruption in their own countries. They've been measuring since 1995. At the same time, organizations in the land sector have started to talk about corruptions very recently. I mean, it's a recent kind of discussions. So I'm expecting a lot of debates and evolution in this area. GZ is doing a fantastic job about land corruption and the relationship between opening information and reducing corruption. Thank you, Laura. I'm going to take a last question here. I would like, maybe, to respond to that. It is normally maybe a question to Laura, but I'd love to see the views. And that's on how do you think that we can avoid that these data ecosystems from transferring decision-making into being a quantitative database so that people become simply not simple statistics. How can we avoid that this whole support into this data ecosystem is not just equating with people, with mere statistics, but taking, I think, other factors qualitative their context? Maybe Dina and then Riot. Yes, so I think data data range should include information of non-scientists in addition to the scientific knowledge as well. So what we just mentioned about the perception of people, the civil society, needing to well prepare a communication to address the needs of the knowledge of the land users themselves. So the governments reflect on their priorities on national levels, and these priorities are reflecting the most pressuring gaps that inputs the performance on the local level. So we need to enhance the whole administrative management system to adopt a bottom approach to map these gaps on the local level. And it's very important to map the activity actors that would exert the effort to obtain the change for collaborating by their participation in the discussion and dialogue and also acting as mediators, I mean. So just like Laura mentioned about the language, we need to unify the language between the government and the local level. So there are some actors that can do that from NGOs from the civil society to unify the language between them. Thank you, Dina. Riot, do you agree? You are muted, Riot. I'm totally agree with Dina because she mentioned the pillar of data ecosystem. So just let the data be accessible and interact between each other and then we'll be sure that this info and this data are always correct. Thank you, Riot. Dear panelists, I would like to just go quickly for a round if you have any last remarks. We are coming to the end of this webinar and I will go quickly if you have any key messages before we leave. We go with Laura. Thank you, Rami. Well, my just last statement is while we recognize that there is an enormous amount of information out there, their visibility, accessibility, consistency and completeness is so different from country to country. So let's join actions to make information more accessible. If you have a database, if you have a repository of documents, if you have any story related to land issue and you want to share it widely, please come to us, work with us to improve this ecosystem in the Arab region. Thank you so much. Evelyn. Yeah, thank you very much to you, Rami and colleagues. I think in terms of my conclusion is to indicate that it is possible to be able to collect data and land information that is useful for policy decision. The role of the government and the government institution has to sit at the center of all this and the other partners provide the support, both in terms of capacity, in terms of the research, in terms of really demonstrating the leadership required for it to be able to do this and be able to really use that information to transform land administration and management for security of tenure rights for all. From UN habitat and GLT side through and working closely with our land, Arab land initiative partners and the conference that is coming up next week I think is another opportunity to continue this conversation and explore ways we can remain connected, we can be able to map and build new relationships and networks for which we can be able to advance this conversation. Otherwise, I'm very pleased to have interacted with you as colleagues as well as those of us from around the world. Thank you. Thank you, Evelyn. Rafiq, over to you. I would like first of all to thank the land portal for this initiative and this webinar. It has been a unique opportunity to discuss these issues of importance to all of us. And I think, well, I hope we'll have other opportunities to discuss such issues and whenever possible to translate that into facts on the ground, if possible. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rafiq. Dina, over to you. I want to extend my thankfulness to the international organizations as Leng Portal and others, of course UN Habitat, GLTN, Arab land initiatives, all these organizations supporting the development of the governments in the Arab region. Of course, we need more participation from active governmental bodies. Maybe in the webinars, we don't see a lot of participation of governmental parties. We need to extend the dialogue between the governmental bodies and the local authorities and maybe the local participants who are now from the region listening to us. So thank you for giving us the floor to explain about that and to highlight more. And thanks for all the highlighting and focusing on the Arab region recently in the past few years. Thank you. Thank you, Dina. Any last few words and recommendations? Right, please. You have to have used it, to have used now, yeah. Yeah, just I want to say thank you for Leng Portal and GLTN because always I feel they are focusing on data and I love this attitude. And actually I will go back to see its numbers. I will tell them we did a good participation in this super event. And I will say also thank for International Land Coalition because they are supporting us to make a step toward transparency and accessible information in terms of land issues in Jordan. Thanks. Thank you very much all the attendees as well. Stay tuned for more webinars to come in Leng Portal. We have the master class next week. Thank you to our panelists very much for your time, sharing this information with us. And if you want to share again any information you may have come to us, contact us in Leng Portal or any of our colleagues here. Thank you and I wish you all a nice afternoon, nice evening, whatever you are. Bye bye.