The workshop is part of the $475,000 preparatory project, funded by the Global Environment Forum through the United Nations Development Programme and is part of a regional project that includes Jordan, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Palestine Authority, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.  

 The preparatory project will come up with a complete proposal, for GEF funding, to establish a regional conservation and monitoring programme targeting globally significant bird species (including raptors) and bird habitats in the east Palearctic and west Arabian flyway.  This flyway is an area of global biodiversity significance characterized by thousands of migratory birds that hibernate in southern Europe and the Middle East. 

 The complete project will aim to reduce threats to significant populations of globally threatened migratory soaring birds along the eastern sector of the Africa-Eurasia flyway and make this a system that is safe for their passage within its preparatory phase through addressing the underlying causes of the threats that affect soaring birds diversity within the flyway. 

This workshop is essential to develop the national problem analysis on the threats facing soaring birds along its migration on the national level, as threats to birds within the flyway system may be really local in nature and need to be addressed at that level.  Others may be national, regional, or sector-specific in nature and action will most effectively take the form of effective dialogue, awareness raising, stakeholder participation, and incentives for sustainable management backed by a mix of measures underpinning the policy, legal and legislative foundation for making the flyway safe for soaring migratory birds.  The national problem analysis will eventually be synthesized into a regional analysis.