Middle East Regional Cooperation Program Marks 25 Years of Success
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 30, 2006
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WASHINGTON D.C. - The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrates 25 years of success with the Middle East Regional Cooperation (MERC) program. MERC is a research program aimed at promoting technical cooperation between Arab and Israeli scientists and despite unrest in parts of the region, participation in the program has increased in recent years. Direct cooperation between Arab and Israeli researchers has led to significant advances in areas ranging from integrated pest management to control of infectious diseases and water resources management.
Dr. Robert B. Abel of the Stevens Institute in New Jersey, the very first MERC grantee, recently noted, "By almost any index of measurement, this program must be considered among the most successful - for its size - of any such activity in the [U.S.] Government."
The MERC Program was initiated by Congress in 1979 after the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords and awarded its first grant on August 20, 1981. Since that time, MERC has funded about 80 joint research projects, the majority of which have been awarded since 2000. While initially limited to U.S.-Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, the program expanded after the 1991 Madrid Conference to include participation by Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Moroccans, and Tunisians.
As an example of the catalytic effect MERC has had on cooperation between scientists in the region, a record 36 MERC projects were active in 2005, triple the number of projects that were concurrently active during any year before 1999. In 2006, MERC received 95 grant applications, almost four times the 24 applications received in 2002. Arab-Israeli cooperation within projects has become more direct. Instead of depending on U.S. intermediaries as project leaders, over 80 percent are led directly by the scientists in the Middle East. Scientists and students visit each other's countries for training, field studies and workshops, and several students from Arab countries have conducted part of their graduate research in Israel.
MERC projects have produced scientific achievements in many different fields leading to significant development contributions. In one recent example, the demonstration of a wastewater treatment technology developed by a Palestinian-Israeli-Egyptian MERC partnership in a West Bank village led to the adoption of the technology in neighboring villages and construction of similar treatment facilities using both local and other donor financing. In the health sector, as another example, a Palestinian-Israeli MERC partnership developed a low-cost, efficient method of screening blood donations for Hepatitis-C.
For more information on this project, please visit the website at http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/merc06.html.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years.
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