Skip to footer

Opposition groups protest proposed law regulating NGOs in Egypt

Egypt's opposition parties and human rights groups say a proposed bill requiring NGOs to be vetted and receive special permissions by the government would restrict their work. 

  • By Shaimaa Fayed Reuters

| Cairo

Egypt's main opposition bloc said on Saturday that a Muslim Brotherhood-backed bill to regulate human rights groups and other private organisations was an attempt to stifle their work.

The National Salvation Front (NSF), an alliance of liberal and leftist opposition parties, said the draft law submitted to the Shura Council, which for now has legislative powers, was more restrictive than laws under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.

The NSF said in a statement that the bill "seeks to reproduce a police state by putting into law the role of security bodies in overseeing the work of civil society groups."

Human rights groups have also criticised the law, which stipulates that non-governmental groups (NGOs) must be vetted by a committee partly drawn from the security services and must get official permission to receive funds from abroad.

"This can allow these entities to refuse funding for rights groups that monitor elections or work to fight torture ... there is an insistent position by the ruling regime driven by lack of political will to take any reform initiative towards democracy and respect for human rights," the NSF statement said.

Under Mubarak, NGOs ran into trouble over funding by Western countries and such constraints have continued after his fall.

Last year, when Egypt was still under interim army rule, an investigation into the work of international NGOs, including some U.S.-based groups, led to a crisis in ties with Washington.

Mokhtar al-Ashry, head of the legal committee of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, told Reuters the bill would ensure freedom for NGOs and that the security apparatus would provide only one of nine members on the committee overseeing their activities and funding. Asked why any security official should play such a role, Ashry ended the conversation.

Earlier this month, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the draft law risked betraying the ideals of Egypt's 2011 revolution and said governments restricting civil society work "risk slipping quickly into authoritarianism".

The NSF said it would back another bill drafted by a coalition of 50 civil society groups.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Opposition groups protest proposed law regulating NGOs in Egypt
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0518/Opposition-groups-protest-proposed-law-regulating-NGOs-in-Egypt
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe