On February 2nd 2016, Nature Iraq advocacy team held a joint meeting in coordination with Kurdistan Organization for Animal Rights Protection (KOARP) at the meeting hall of the Veterinary Directorate of Duhok, with representatives of 27 directorates and decision makers as well as members of the Civil Society Organizations, attending the meeting, below are name of directorates:

1- University of Zakho.
2- University of Dohuk health safety and Environmental department.  
3- Dohuk Environmental office.
4- Directorate of Veterinary.
5- Directorate of Dohuk Dams.
6- Orchards Police Directorate and the environment Dohuk.
7- Travel and Tourism Directorate in Duhok.
8- Conservatism Dohuk.
9- General Directorate for agriculture.
10 - Members of Kurdistan Parliament.
11- Member of Parliament in Iraq.
12- Aza Organization for Environment protection.  
13- Farashin Organization for Environment protection.
14- Kurdistan Water Organization.
15- National Association in Duhok.
 
The meeting focused on two main issues, first part started to give a brief about launched the first Environmental Legislation Guides in Kurdistan Region – Iraq and we explained that
the guide is consisted of three important elements of the environment (Soil, Water and Air) and also the living elements (plants and animals) in three languages (Kurdish, Arabic and English), and we distributed 250 copies of both languages of the guide in the same meeting.
 
The second part of the meeting, we explained the main goal of the Advocacy project   improve participation and feedback between CSOs, and the public and government in the process of developing effective environmental laws and regulations, Although the final version is published in the Official Gazette, but the laws of Iraq are developed without public input. Overall, the public has no input and rarely even knows when a law is passed or what their rights are under the law. That is why we held this joint meeting to modify the provisions of article of instruction on Hunting and Protection of Wild Animals and Birds, Number (1) of 2015, this instruction is published in Official Gazette on April 2015.
All attendance were agreed that this instruction No. 1 of 2015 has many legal deficiencies and through the implementation of these instructions cannot control the phenomenon of over-hunting , So the final modified version will be submitted to  Protection and Improvement Board in KRG, in order to publish the new version in Official Gazette.

​On 1 Feb 2016, advocacy project team from Nature Iraq organization has been invited from the deputy Minister of the province for the Environment at the Environmental Protection and Improvement Board in KRG ( Mr. AbdulRahman Abdul Rahim), To appreciate the efforts of Advocacy team, during worked on the first environmental legal guide was published in December 2015 in three languages (Kurdish, Arabic and English).
At the meeting we explained the main goals of Advocacy project to encourage Agencies and CSOs to have an active role in the development of environmental laws and regulatory policy, with best practice examples from Government environmental bodies and NGOs and the different kinds of advocacy activities that exist in KRG especially on the legal environmental issues.
His excellency Abdul Rahim repeated to support the advocacy project in order to achieve the goals of the project. Under the name of Environmental Protection and Improvement Board in KRG. The Advocacy team has been received a Letter of Appreciation, this great encouragement means a lot for our team, and will make us more active to reach out the best results.