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Our History and Progress
Since it was jointly founded in 1997 by a group of Jewish and Arab residents of the Negev, the Forum has developed strong relationships with at least 20 Bedouin communities and can point to a number of key achievements. Working together with the local communities, we have helped bring basic services, such as piped water supplies, nursery schools, access roads and rubbish removal systems, to nearly a dozen unrecognized villages. With respect to advocacy, the Forum has filed a number of successful petitions in collaboration with village representatives and other civil rights groups against the Israeli government for discriminatory practices and submitted several shadow reports to treaty monitoring bodies. Further, since 2005, the Forum has sent representatives to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York and to the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva.
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