Civil Society Assistance Difficult in Egypt

Civil Society Assistance Difficult in Egypt

Imco Brouwer, Mediterranean Program Coordinator-European University Institute, 2000, Funding Virtue: civil society aid and democracy promotion, eds. M. Ottaway & T. Carothers, p. 26-7

The Egyptian state has long been paranoid about civil society and has sought to control it. After the revolution against the monarchy broke out in 1952, the state took over most independent organizations—chambers of commerce, trade unions, and the federation of industries, among others—and it has never given up control. A number of organizations that in other countries would have been established by citizens, such as agricultural cooperatives, have been set up and are controlled by the government in Egypt. The Mubarak regime shares this fear of civil society. As already mentioned, stricter controls were imposed on the professional syndicates under a law adopted in 1993. A new Law on Associations and Civil Institutions, adopted in May 1999 after a long debate in the Egyptian People’s Assembly notwithstanding opposition from civil society organizations and some Western donors, is as restrictive as the infamous Law No. 32 of 1964 it replaced. Among other provisions, it allows the state to intervene in the administrative and financial affairs of civil society organizations. The regime can dismiss board members, appoint government representatives, and prevent organizations from receiving foreign funds. The ruling party’s fear of civil society and determination to keep it under control have been well expressed by the Minister of Insurance and Social Affairs, who oversees civil society organizations: “I am not allowing this [new] law for the creation of 14,000 political parties.” Among other things, the government is highly sensitive to the foreign funding of civil society organizations and seeks to curb it. In the winter of 1998-99 the issue again came to the fore with the arrest of the secretary-general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights on charges that his group had received financing from the British Parliament for a report on human rights abuses against Copts and Muslims. He, his organization, and the British government were accused of stirring up religious strife and damaging Egypt’s image abroad. The subsequent debate in the Egyptian press showed clearly that the issue of foreign funding remains extremely sensitive, that the NGOs receiving such funding are open to government reprisal, and that the Egyptian government is unwilling to remove the uncertainty surrounding the legality of foreign financing of civil society, while receiving billions of dollars of foreign assistance itself.
EGYPTIAN CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS RELUCTANT TO ACCEPT US ASSISTANCE

Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, Professor Cairo University, 2000, Funding Virtue: civil society aid and democracy promotion, eds. M. Ottaway & T. Carothers, p. 66

It is this suspicion of U.S. interference in Egypt’s internal affairs that makes both Muslim and Coptic religious bodies reluctant to ask for U.S. aid. It is rare, in fact, for Muslim bodies to ask assistance of non-Muslim countries at a time when many Arabs and Muslims are rich and can provide well for them. Coptic churches, for their part, have become suspicious of other Christian churches and the countries in which they are located, particularly of Western Protestant churches that have been active in Egypt and have turned some Copts away from the faith into which they were born. Moreover, neither Islamic nor Coptic religious bodies in Egypt suffer from a shortage of funds, since Egyptians usually donate generously to religious institutions. In fact, the earliest voluntary associations in Egypt were founded by domestic religious bodies and made valuable contributions to education, health care, and charitable work in the country.
CIVIL SOCIETY ASSISTANCE INHERENTLY POLITICAL – UNDERMINES SUPPORT IN EGYPT

Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2000, Funding Virtue: civil society aid and democracy promotion, eds. M. Ottaway & T. Carothers, p. 296

Seteney Shami, Middle East Program Director, Social Science Research Council, 2009, Publics, Politics and Participation: locating the public sphere in the middle east and north Africa, ed. S. Shami, p. 35-6

Calhoun critiques the slippage between civil society and the public sphere through a review of the literature on “transitions to democracy” in Eastern Europe and in China. In many countries of the “second” and “third” worlds, the 1990s witnessed a burgeoning of civil society associations, propelled both by domestic aims as well as created important linkages to transnational activism and advocacy groups, it is important to evaluate its success in terms of long term changes. The impact of civil society, however lively, on formal democratic processes may be extremely limited (as in Egypt for example) and it also raises contentious and difficult questions regarding the proper balance between state building and civil society/nation building (in Palestine for example.) Examining the pubic spheres created by these associations and activities gives us a further dimension by which to judge relative success; is the growth of civil society accompanied by the development of spheres of participation and discussion that deepen the sense of citizenship, accountability and rights and consequently has positive implications for the development of political communities and social mobilization?