Al-Ahram Weekly | Features | The silence of disapproval

		20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 Features	Current issue Previous issue Site map
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The silence of disapproval
Human rights organisations were the most outspoken against the new NGO law. But what of the rest, asks Mariz Tadros

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Top: NGOs contribute to the struggle against illiteracy. Here girls are learning to read;
Above: NGO demonstrators protesting Law 153 which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June 2000, just six months after it took effect
According to an Egyptian saying silence is a sign of approval. But how do we interpret the silence of the vast majority of Egypt's 16,000 NGOs who failed to speak out throughout the debate of the NGO bill that passed into law a fortnight ago. To begin with, half of the 16,000 NGOs were silent because they are dead. In an interview in 1999, the former minister of social affairs, Mervat Tallawy, told Al-Ahram Weekly that a little less than half of the then 14,000 NGOs were inactive.
But what about the rest; did their silence signify approval of the law?
Yousreya Loza, a former MP and secretary- general of the Sawiris Development Foundation, thought that the new law might have articles which did not facilitate voluntary work -- such as the imposition of sales taxes on the revenues of NGOs engaged in income-generating activities on behalf of their communities. She believed, however, that all in all, the new law did not hinder developmental work.
Others thought differently. Saadeddin Ibrahim, prominent NGO activist and sociology professor suggested that many did not speak out for fear of being exposed to bureaucratic obstruction of their work. Ibrahim has been paying a heavy price for his advocacy work in the NGO sector. Accused of "defaming" Egypt's reputation and receiving foreign funding without government permission through his work as head of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development Studies (a local NGO), Ibrahim was handed down a seven- year prison term, of which he served 10 months. He is now facing a retrial on the same charges after the Court of Cassation overturned the first ruling against him.
Such fears are not baseless, as Adel Abu Zahra, a prominent NGO activist from Alexandria, pointed out. "One organisation," he said, "is facing allegations by the Ministry of Social Affairs of financial irregularity because it served tea and coffee to visitors and can't show receipts for this. This means abuse of public money. I suspect they are facing this because they stood against the former law."
An additional reason, according to Abu Zahra, was that many lost heart after the previous campaign against Law 153.
A Forum for the Development of Civic Work was established in 1999 to campaign against Law 153. It comprised more than a hundred development and human rights organisations.
"People had high hopes that their petition to the president not to ratify the law would be considered, but the law was in fact ratified on the same day. They then felt that they were making sacrifices for nothing, so why do it again?" Abu Zahra pointed out, adding that many had come to the conclusion that the only way they could bring about change was through litigation.
The majority of registered NGOs in Egypt are working in charity provision or community development work. A small number have sought to incorporate development work with advocacy -- trying to influence policy-makers through lobbying and campaigning to change policies and laws that affect the people they work with on a grassroots level. It is NGOs that have sought to engage in any kind of advocacy work that the new law is intended to intimidate, opines Adel Abu Zahra.
"The government has no problem with charitable associations that distribute meat to the poor, or sweep streets. But to defend people's right to freedom of expression and their rights vis-à-vis the government is not acceptable," said Adel Abu Zahra.
Farida El-Naqqash, a board member of the NGO Forum for Women in Development, wonders how the organisation will fare when the new law, which forbids NGOs from engaging in political activities, is applied.
"We have been fighting against the nationality law [which does not grant citizenship to the children of women married to foreigners], and we lobbied for changes in the Personal Status Law. Changing laws is the essence of political activity. We have just published a book about women in the textile industry. One of its main findings was that privatisation would have a negative effect on women. Now if we work on privatisation and its relationship to unemployment and the feminisation of poverty, we may risk having the government accuse us of violating the new law by engaging in political activity [since we are criticising government economic policy] and of engaging in activities which are the prerogative of trade unions."
The law, said El-Naqqash, discourages people from engaging in work that may provoke problems, especially as it gives the ministry the right to liquidate an NGO without going to court.
While the former and current ministers of social affairs have repeatedly assured NGOs that the government intends to grant associations the greatest possible freedom to work and would apply the law with considerable flexibility, this has not dissipated NGO anxiety. Several human rights organisations which agreed to register under Law 153 later complained that they were exposed to unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and what they called "harassment".
The forum is one of the few registered developmental organisations which was ready to speak out against the law and signed the petition that was handed to Fathi Sorour, Speaker of the People's Assembly. (The petition had asked for the law to be referred to public discussion before being debated in the People's Assembly). El Naqqash said that ever since the forum took part in the campaign against Law 153, on the same premise as their opposition to the current one, their membership had gone down.
"People just don't want always to end up in a confrontational situation with the government when they decide to engage in voluntary activity."
Another NGO worker, who has voluntarily worked in several developmental NGOs, said: "Why should I take the trouble to work as a volunteer only to end up facing the possibility of being put in prison? It takes only the slightest infringement of the law, which can easily happen unintentionally, to be heavily penalised. Why should any self-respecting citizen risk being imprisoned for voluntary civic activity?"
The law, he protested, treats citizens as if they were criminals until they prove otherwise. He is considering whether he is going to continue to be as active as he was before. Harsh penalties were added to Law 153, and later to the new law. One of the basic principles in development work, he explained, was that as an NGO, you had a constituency, you had to build a public base through grassroots work.
"But when you think about it," he said, "how can you do that, when you run the risk of being accused of meddling in politics since this work can be done by political parties?"
The new law, according to the same NGO activist, has exposed the government's talk of partnership with civil society as so much rhetoric. "You can work in illiteracy but you can't go beyond that. You can forget about being a channel for bringing people's grievances before policy-makers or acting as a channel for inducing change. The door is now closed to participating in decision-making and policy- formulation of development work", he said.
An NGO can, however, choose to engage in "non-confrontational advocacy work" -- a term coined by a development professional working in one of Egypt's most prominent NGOs. He too spoke on condition of anonymity. He explained that his organisation would try and work around many articles, including that of not engaging in political activity.
"We do advocacy our own way. We advocate the rights of street children, for example, by improving their situation."
Much of the work pertaining to advocacy is done, not against the government but through maintaining close PR relations with it. Some, however, wonder how effective such a strategy is in changing the root causes of social problems.
There were, nevertheless, a number of articles in the law which he found disturbing, especially the right of the Ministry of Social Affairs to liquidate an association if it joined an international network of NGOs without prior official permission.
"This will ultimately lead to the isolation of Egyptian NGOs from the rest of the global NGO community," he said. The consequences were, he added, twofold.
Firstly, NGOs would not be able to mobilise international NGOs and create coalitions around important issues which was what Egyptian NGOs successfully did at the Anti- Racism Conference held in Durban, South Africa last August.
Secondly, NGOs lost out when they did not keep up with developments in the international NGO sector.
AUC's Ibrahim said that there were several possible ways in which NGOs active in advocacy could deal with the new law. Some people, he predicted, would "find ways of getting around the law", continuing to work until they figured out counter tactics. Others would choose to operate informally.
There were two other possible scenarios, he said, which he emphasised would not contribute to Egypt's social development. One was to become clandestine and go underground. The other was to decide to register outside the country.
He feared there might be a "flight of NGOs" who continued to do their advocacy work outside while maintaining a nominal existence inside.
Many NGO activists told the Weekly that they didn't understand the logic behind issuing a restrictive law at a time when the international community was placing so much emphasis on the activities of civic organisations.
El-Naqqash suggested it might be connected with the rescinding of basic civil rights in some Western countries following the events of 11 September. This meant that "developing countries need no longer fear the West's condemnation of their violation of human rights."

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