|
Opening welcome by President H.E Majed Al Mansouri
“Vice-presidents, Board Members, invited experts and observers - welcome to the 2021 IAF meeting. Despite the strangeness of the past year, the usual activities that are so important to falconers have been gradually opening up, and we are seeing the start of hunting meetings and social events, somewhere to meet with our friends and supporters.
Although we haven’t, until now, been able to meet in person for a very long time, every day IAF has been fighting for small changes nationally and internationally, as you have seen in the reports. It is a pleasure for me to welcome you all, especially those of you who are here in person.”
President’s Report 2020-2021
"All the world has experienced some form of lockdown due to the Covid19 pandemic. Some restrictions have been severe for over a year, some less severe. The enthusiasm that unites us all, falconry, has continued in some countries and is opening up in others. What has suffered most, has been international social events and our ability to show hospitality towards each other. With the roll-out of vaccines and the opening of international travel, we hope to see the end of difficult times very soon.
Life has continued, and so has the work of the IAF. We have become familiar with the technology for video-conferencing, which has been enabling conferences, workshops and chats to continue in a face-to-face way. In November last year, we held our IAF Council of Delegates Meeting by Zoom. It was attended by 75 delegates and club representatives, which would have been considered a large number in a normal meeting. It is encouraging to see such enthusiasm.
The new technologies meant that we could also vote electronically, and we congratulated Adrian Reuter from Mexico, as the IAF Vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean. This year the elections are also taking place electronically.
We have used Zoom many times since then, for meetings of regional and specialist working groups, for progress on the Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Museum of International Falconry, and for the excellent series of fortnightly talks “Sharing the Knowledge”, which kept us meeting regularly. Looking forward to receiving the excellent annual Journal and all the online publications has indeed been vital in giving us a sense of unity.
More credit for uniting us must go to three Working Groups: the Communications and PR Group, the Womens’ Working Group and the Education Working Group, which includes the army of volunteer translators, who translate our publications into all six United Nations working languages, and others important to falconers. The efforts of the volunteers in all the working groups to keep us all communicating, have meant that distance and absence have ceased being insurmountable issues.
The IAF Conference on “Capacity building for a sustainable future for falconry”, is going ahead here in Abu Dhabi, as part of EFC’s 2021 ADIHEX Exhibition. IAF’s relationship with the UNESCO ICH continues to be good, and there are proposed extensions to the list of countries that recognize falconry as ICH, both the international listings and national listings. Many clubs have worked very hard and the IAF is happy to continue to help with all of this work; we have an excellent team.
Activities in the Regional Working Groups have been intense this year, usually involving a lot of work from the Legalization Team. These have been notified in the monthly eBulletins and may be seen in the working group reports linked to the agenda of this meeting.
Each year it has to be noted that IAF is a federation of falconry clubs and falconry-related organizations, and we use the knowledge and expertise gained in many of these countries to assist countries in difficulty. However, we cannot act on national issues without being asked by our IAF national club organizations, to which all IAF’s resources are dedicated. There are some ongoing national issues we have been addressing, and these are detailed in the reports.
IAF was active this year, in all the Conservation Conventions, with online presences and emailed correspondence. Progress was made in the Bern Convention, where IAF now attends the annual meetings of the Standing Committee and sits on three expert groups, policy, invasive alien species and illegal killing and trade. In IUCN IAF attended both by Zoom and with the first in-person attendance since the start of the pandemic. A Memorandum of Understanding between IAF and IUCN is proposed to formalize our relationship.
Our relationship with other hunting organizations has also been formalized, with FACE (the European Hunters’ Federation) presenting a Falconry Policy to its members, that will ensure we can rely on the support of all the European hunters’ organizations if we need their help.
The Welfare Working Group this year finished the production of a set of veterinary leaflets to help falconers to recognize common diseases and to assist non-specialist vets. The Welfare Course for Raptors used in Falconry is ready and will be launched during this meeting.
Finally, I express my gratitude and recognition for ALL the leaders of the IAF working groups, their members, and all the delegates who work so hard to promote falconry, to achieve the IAF’s mission and goals. Our biggest asset is the strength, competence, and skills of our volunteers, so thank you all."
|
