Recent years have seen a deal of conflict over civil society, with activists and lawyers digging in for a prolonged confrontation with a government, or succession of governments, apparently hell bent on trimming the scale, freedom and financing of non-governmental organisations of various types in Egypt. Since the 25 January Revolution, NGOs claim, the government has come up with draft laws that have often failed to meet international standards for civil society work. More specifically, many of these proposals have run in the face of the Egyptian constitution itself, which recognises and encourages the role of NGOs in public life. Attempts at a compromise, frequent as they have been, have failed to bring satisfaction to either the government or the hundreds of civil society groups working in the country. The confrontation came to a head when the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the government agency in charge of civil society organisations, came up with an ultimatum. It told all NGOs not registered with the ministry to do so without delay, or face the consequences. Many of those NGOs, needless to say, operate legally and have official recognition from other government departments. But unless they are registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, in accordance with a law that the ministry itself admits needs to be changed, they may be liable to legal action.
FACING CLOSURE? The Human Rights Centre for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRCAP) is only one of many groups seeking to rescind the current law and replace it with another that will allow civil society the chance to do its work without excessive interference from the Ministry of Social Solidarity or other government agencies. For years, the HRCAP has offered educational, medical and legal aid to prisoners and their families. But about 17 months ago, the HRCAP suspended many of its operations because the ministry wouldn't give it the endorsement it needed to release funds offered by the EU to help it perform its duties. “We have been working all our lives to help prisoners in Egypt, and we have been carrying out a project that has received regular funding from the EU with government approval,” Mohamed Zarie, the HRCAP's director, said. In April 2013, the HRCAP submitted a report to the ministry demanding approval of the EU funding. No answer has yet been received. “We have signed a contract and sent a copy to the EU. We have taken all the measures that needed to be taken. Three presidents have served since then, Mohamed Morsi, Adli Mansour, and now Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. But so far no approval or refusal has materialised,” Zarie added. This absence of a reply has hindered the work of the HRCAP. If the ministry were to turn down the request, it would have recourse to the courts, but the government's silence would make it harder for a judge to pass a ruling in the case. Zarie said that when he asked the reason for the government's silence of the ministers in question, since more than one minister has filled this post since the request was made, he received one answer, and that was off the record: the ministry had not “received an answer from the security services”. But even the current law on civil society that the NGOs want to revoke does not require the security services to have a say in the matter. “Our funds have now been in the bank for 17 months, but we still cannot access them,” Zarie remarked. The HRCAP had had to borrow nearly LE260,000 to keep its operations running on a minimal basis, he added. “Is this matter so sensitive that three regimes and three cabinets or more have not been able to make up their mind about it,” he asked. The HRCAP's assistance to prisoners and their families includes the payment of tuition and medical bills and other activities that are conducted in coordination with government agencies and the prisons department, according to Zarie. Other NGOs have similar complaints, and one of them recently saw the need to write an open letter to President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi himself. “We are writing to you, Mr President, to avert a confrontation with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, a confrontation which can only have unwanted national and international repercussions. We write to you because we have exhausted all other means,” the letter said. Sent by Baheyyeddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the letter called on the president to end the stalemate between the ministry and civil society organisations. At the heart of the stalemate is Law 84 for 2002, a piece of legislation that has been widely denounced by people in the field. Since the 25 January Revolution, there have been various attempts to put together a new law to replace this law, which activists say imposes excessive restrictions on NGOs in matters of registration, operation and funding. For months, the Ministry of Social Solidarity and Ministry of Justice had said they have been trying to come up with an alternative to Law 84. But in July 2014, civil society organisations were shocked by an advertisement placed by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in Al-Ahram that said that “entities working in civil society which are not registered in keeping with the current law must register within 45 days.” The “entities” in question found this announcement infuriating, especially since most of the NGOs that are not registered with the ministry work in a legal manner and apply the usual norms of transparency and accountability. The awkwardness this new step added to an already tricky situation also caused quite a stir among civil society workers. While the ministry later extended the deadline by another 30 days, this didn't do much to allay the NGOs' concerns. Zarie described the ministry's move as “very disturbing and dangerous, practically a declaration of war against civil society organisations”. Representatives of various NGOs had met with Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb, he said, while others had sent a memorandum to President Al-Sisi. Several had had talks with members of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR). “The issue has to do with political will,” Zarie concluded.
DRAFT LAWS: During the past three years several attempts have been made to put together a law that would regulate NGOs without hampering their freedom of movement. In January 2012, a draft law was prepared by the Ministry of Social Solidarity that is known among civil society workers as the “Hegazi draft,” a reference to the president of the Federation of Non-Governmental Organisations during the rule of former president Hosni Mubarak. Ali Al-Meseilhi, the minister at the time, had also come up with a draft law in 2009, but had failed to push it through. In 2012, members of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) proposed a draft law in the People's Assembly. This draft was criticised for being too strict in addressing foreign financing and international organisations and for allowing the state to interfere, albeit on a limited scale, in the work of NGOs. Other aspects of the draft were thought acceptable, but as a whole it fell short of expectations. As a result, discussion of the draft in the People's Assembly was postponed, and the parliament was dissolved before having the chance to pass it. In January 2013, the ministry prepared another draft law to which civil society groups objected with a passion. This draft proposed the formation of a coordinating committee, including representatives from the administrative and security agencies, to vet the foreign financing of NGOs and their relations with international organisations and UN agencies. “The law clearly adopted the view that what happened on 25 January was a terrible thing and that the reason [the Revolution] took place was that there was an abundance of freedom in the country, which must be checked,” said Zarie. The draft law, he explained, would have allowed the government to control everything to do with NGOs, including their board meetings and activities. The same draft law would have given the judiciary the power to disband NGOs for any “failure” to meet their stated objectives. A few days after the ministry came up with this draft law, the FJP came up with another draft law of its own which would have established the above-mentioned “coordinating committee” and made it harder for international organisations to operate in Egypt. In the face of overwhelming objections to the draft law, the then president, Mohamed Morsi, referred it to a legislative committee for further study. But the legislative committee made no substantial changes in the draft and resubmitted it on 30 May 2013. The fury among civil society organisations was such that 40 NGOs released a joint statement accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of “trying to create a new police state.”
RECONCILIATION ATTEMPTS: When Ahmed Al-Borai became minister of social solidarity following the 30 June Revolution in 2013, things began to look up for civil society in Egypt. Al-Borai formed a committee to draft a new law for NGOs, and the committee was both broad-based and willing to look into the concerns of all the parties concerned. Among the members of the committee were representatives of human rights groups, NGOs specialising in development, federal and regional NGO associations, and the ministry itself. After six months of deliberations, the committee put together a draft law that largely conformed to local expectations and international standards. According to this draft law, an NGO can acquire legal status through notification of the government agency dealing with civil society. The government agency in question can only object to the NGO's formation if it engages in any of the legal violations listed in Article 11 of the law. For example, NGOs must not fund or support election campaigns, but they are free to educate people about elections or raise political awareness. NGOs are also free to express their opinions in matters of public interest. Article 19 of the same draft allows NGOs to receive funds, grants, gifts and endowments from natural or legal persons, Egyptian or otherwise. The NGOs would, however, have to notify the authorities of the donor's name and the activity in which the funds were earmarked within 30 days of receiving the funds. The authorities could object to the funding within 60 days, but not afterwards. Zarie was one of the members of the committee that drafted the law. “We finished the draft in December 2013, and it was the best draft law proposed so far. It largely met international norms, and with some tweaking could have gone a long way towards giving NGOs the freedom they need,” he said. Having introducing a few changes to the draft, Al-Borai presented it to the cabinet in February 2014. However, Al-Borai's successor as minister of social solidarity, Ghada Wali, pulled the law out of the cabinet, along with five other draft laws on the same topic. And in June 2014, the ministry put forward another proposal to the government entitled “administrative proposals for 2014 concerning the law for civil society organisations.” Unfortunately, these were not an amended version of the draft Al-Borai's committee had worked on, but a rehash of the proposals the government had submitted in January 2013. In August 2014, the NCHR organised a workshop on the matter and invited Wali to attend. During this workshop, Wali said she knew nothing about the draft proposal sent to the cabinet, except that it was already circulating in her ministry, and added that she was under the impression that these proposals were made by former minister Al-Borai. Al-Borai, who was also present in the same workshop, said that these were not his proposals. “So now we had proposals of unknown parenthood,” Zarie commented. The draft law the ministry proposed in 2014, Zarie suspects, sums up the official view of NGOs and their future. In his view, the government wants to control civil society and its funding and activities. If the government had its way, NGOs would only be able to work in activities the government sanctioned and in a manner approved by the security apparatus, he said. Any NGO failing to meet these requirements could be penalised through a wide range of measures. For example, the current draft bans NGOs from carrying out field research or opinion polls without the consent of the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMS). Also, because the draft law in question considers all NGO funds as public funds, NGOs can find themselves answering to the Egyptian penal code, which can prove too strict by civil society standards. According to the same draft law, an NGO may have legal status only if it files a statement of its bylaws with the ministry within 60 days of registration. If the ministry objects, the NGO will not be able to operate legally and may have to take the ministry to court, an arrangement which is not conducive to speedy action. Furthermore, NGOs have to obtain the consent of the ministry prior to accepting funds from donors. And as permits for foreign funding would have to be issued by a “coordinating committee,” civil society workers say that the odds could be easily stacked against them. For example, the said committee could start examining non-legal aspects of the NGOs' work, which would be unacceptable by current norms. “The authors of the 2014 proposals acted in clear contempt of the entire 50-member committee that drafted the new constitution, which calls for forming NGOs by notification and prohibits their dissolution without court order,” Zarie said. Article 75 of the constitution allows individuals to form civil society groups and organisations with only the need to notify the authorities. The constitution also notes that NGOs should be permitted to operate freely and cannot be dissolved without court order. Civil society workers point to the plethora of international rules defending the rights of individuals and groups to engage in non-profit and non-governmental activities. For example, Article 22 of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights notes that “everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” The same document asserts that “no restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” During the above-mentioned workshop, Wali promised the passage of “a law expressing the ideals of the two revolutions.” Civil society workers have since questioned the sincerity of her intentions. At one point in the discussions, Wali claimed that the ministry had not taken part in writing the draft law submitted by her predecessor Al-Borai. But Hafez Abu Seada, chair of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights and facilitator of the committee that wrote the draft, begged to disagree. According to Abu Seada, the committee meetings were attended by ministry officials as well as by representatives of the ministries of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The committee, he added, had held discussions with nearly 2,000 NGOs organised by the Federation of Non-Governmental Organisations (FNGO). About 20 international organisations had also taken part in the meetings. “The draft law [presented by Al-Borai] would have facilitated the work of NGOs,” Abu Seada commented. Negad Al-Borai, who also participated in the committee, agreed, saying that the “Al-Borai draft law, despite its problems, was more liberal than anything the Egyptian government was comfortable with.” “The government keeps talking about freedom and helping civil society, but the security services still believe that civil society work is harmful to national security. But if they sit with us, we should be able to find a compromise that is acceptable to all,” she added. According to Zarie, the country's NGOs are willing to talk to anyone who wishes to discuss the civil society law. Yet, while Wali has said that she is ready to form a committee to look into the matter, so far no invitations have been issued, and Zarie said that no one knew if such a committee had been formed or not. Wali was “prejudiced against NGOs,” he said, citing the ultimatum she had issued through the press. The minister has also recently told Al-Ahram Al-Iqtisadi that non-registered entities receive “dubious funding,” get involved in politics, and carry out research and training in fields related to human rights. According to recent figures, nearly 45,000 NGOs are registered in Egypt. According to Article 4 of the current NGO law, civil society organisations failing to register with the Ministry of Social Solidarity are liable to confiscation and closure as well as up to six months in prison for their administrators.
INTERNATIONAL NORMS: While Egypt grapples with this confrontation between the state and civil society, Tunisia does not seem to be having similar troubles. It has just passed a law for NGOs that has received high praise from UN officials for its fairness to civil society. Moatazz Al-Fojeiri, a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), is an expert on civil society laws and says that in European countries such as Denmark, for example, there are no laws for NGOs per se, as civil society activities are regulated by normal civil laws. In Britain, Al-Fojeiri was able to set up a non-profit organisation within 24 hours and without leaving his house, a feat that cost him less than 200 pounds sterling. British law requires non-profit organisations to have three members on their board of directors, so as to establish accountability. For organisations involved in charity work, the British law is more vigilant, and it prohibits these organisations from political work. In France, there are no restrictions on forming or funding civil society groups, but the law prohibits them from engaging in violent activities. Such groups are, however, asked to notify the Interior Ministry of their existence. “The state has no right to refuse or agree to funding. It observes the situation, and if the funds prove to be used in a harmful manner, the NGO will be held accountable,” Al-Fojeiri said. The right to set up NGOs freely in matters of human rights is enshrined in Article 5 of the Declaration on Human Rights, which notes that “for the purpose of promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, at the national and international levels (a) to meet or assemble peacefully; (b) to form, join and participate in non-governmental organisations, associations or groups; (c) to communicate with non-governmental or intergovernmental organisations.” In his open letter to the president, Baheyyeddin Hassan called for the suspension of the current law on the grounds of unconstitutionality and urged the passage of a law that conformed to the constitution. “There is no need for the government to issue an ultimatum about applying a certain law while it says that it is working on formulating an alternative,” Hassan said. Meanwhile, the non-registered NGOs are waiting for either the ministry's axe to fall, or for the law in question to be altered. “We will keep working until either they cancel the announcement or close us down,” Zarie promised.
