HH Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missnad, SCFA President, obliged with a remark at the opening ceremony of the Inauguration of the Arab Sign Dictionary for the Deaf, in which remark she addressed her deaf sons and daughters and those who work with them. HH pointed out that the world in which we live is a fast changing and vast pacing world full of various contradictions and not without conflicts due to a number of reasons that could be attributed to the existence of a huge intellectual and cultural gap among the communities. The civilised world's main concern has become the focusing on the individual's build-up and refinement through bridging the intellectual and cultural gap among peoples. HH emphasised the importance of building bridges of communication among the self-same community's members and the entire cultures.

HH said, "Since concern stems from man and directed to his/her fellow-man, we found it inevitable that we should look at the entire social groups to ensure their entitlement to employment, education and the proper rehabilitation. Among these groups is our dear beloved children of the deaf group who need communicating with the others in order to exchange knowledge and establish means of mutual understanding and to provide them with the state of the art and keeping them abreast of the development taking place in all areas."

HH addressed the workers on the Dictionary and she said: "Your stakes prophited because you concentrated on the deaf's points of strength instead of his/her points of weakness, and out of the deaf's having immense capacities that need dealing with by the appropriate means of communication and to enhance self-confidence. This Dictionary, therefore, has been the outcome of a good-willing meeting in your second homeland Qatar where Arab deaf and those who work with them got together to standardise words aiming at getting to know each other and establishing mutual confidence through sign communication which is an alternative for the spoken word, besides the forming of manual symbols that express feelings and emotions that touch the heart and the conscience, without neglecting taking into consideration the social and academic usage of language as well as the aspects related to the word's meaning and content."

HH congratulated Arab deaf on this achievement, and she appreciated the role of the entire participating bodies that contributed to fulfil this big Arab dream, and she called for the continuation of work as well as to complete this Arab right.

This was mentioned within the inauguration ceremony opened by HE Mr Abdulla bin Nasser Al-Khalifa, SCFA Secretary-General. The Inauguration was organised by SCFA in collaboration with the Arab League on Monday 12th February 2007 in the InterContinental Hotel. HE the Secretary-General reiterated that the first workshop recommended the necessity of the entire Arab states to adopt the Dictionary as a language of communication and to be used officialy for school teaching and media communication.

In the address of the Arab League Secretariat-General, Mr Ibrahim Jaafer Al-Souri stressed the importance of the Dictionary to be a driving-force for developing Arabic sign language to become the counterpart of spoken language.

In the address of Arab Organisation for Education, Culture ans Science, Ms Hayat Al-Wadi called to the necessity of backing this project with further steps towards rehabilitating educators and family members to achieve communication among the members of the Arab world in all of their groups.

In the address of the Arab Federation for the Deaf, Mr Zuhair Al-Awah remarked that this achievement will contribute to furthering communication between the deaf and the others and help them understand and contribute to what is going around them. This achievement, he added, will encourage organisations, institutions, corporations, bodies and deaf and hard of hearing schools to unify the different governmental and non-governmental efforts to push forward the process.

Mr Ali Obeid Al-Sinnari delivered the deaf's address in which he lauded the efforts exerted to achieve the Arab deaf's dream. He, moreover, congratulated his brothers in Qatar because this project was accomplished in Qatar. He, likewise, expressed his delight that the Arab world is concerned with the deaf.

Mr Sameer Samreen, the Dictionary's Chief Expert, explained that work on this Dictionary started some three years ago and 18 states and over 132 participants participitated in it through a workshop which got them together and which was as a linguistic academy in sign language aiming at language enrichment among the deaf.

The inauguration ceremony was followed by a four-day workshop for training on the mechanism of using the Dictionary. Specialists took part in this area.