Four organizations concerned in fighting corruption deny the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s exclusion

The organizations: the Ministry’s behavior indicates their negative perspective towards the hard-working organizations against corruption based on human rights

Partners for Transparency, the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists, Egyptian without Borders, and the Integrity and Transparency Studies and Programs for Human Rights Foundation expresses their surprise by the incomprehensible and unjustified behavior of the Ministry of Social Solidarity and its insistence to exclude the four organizations, considered between the most prominent Egyptian NGOs concerned in fighting corruption, from the participation in the forums and meetings organized by the Ministry to address the role of civil society organizations in fighting corruption.

The Ministry of Social Solidarity, the General Federation Of NGOS, and the Egyptian Association for Cooperative Studies cooperated in the organization of a forum last Monday 31^st of July 2017 entitled “Civil Society Role in Fighting Corruption”, when the Ministry two months ago called for a meeting with the concerned NGOs in fighting corruption to receive proposals that could be funded via the Association’s Support Fund without inviting any of the four organizations.

It’s worth mentioning that the four organizations are almost the sole organizations in Egypt working on fighting corruption institutionally as a main focus years ago, each and every one of them implemented a large number of projects and programs on fighting corruption and promotion of integrity, transparency and accountability in cooperation with local and international development partners, they also provided dozens of theses, recommendations, legislations proposals and systematic reports towards reforming the legislative and institutional environment, as well as their participation in dozens of national, regional and international forums in the context of the same cause.

The four organizations efforts were and still are of interest, appreciation and wide participation of MPs, experts, governmental officials and concerned parties in fighting corruption, as well as receiving significant media attention, those efforts and roles are known and documented to the Ministry as the concerned institution on application of the governing law to NGOs work.

Partners for Transparency, the Arab Program for Human Rights Activists, Egyptian without Borders, and the Integrity and Transparency Studies and Programs for Human Rights Foundation ensures that the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s attitudes reflects its negative perspective towards the active NGOs in fighting corruption from a defense perspective based on calling for public policy reform, development of legislations and creating the institutional environment, indicating the Ministry’s lack of commitment to address the case with the sufficient interest, which was evident by the Ministry’s officials insistence to exclude the serious expertise having an integrated vision driven from a comprehensive realization for fighting corruption requirements along with an accurate reading for the linked international and constitutional commitments.

Civil work in Egypt is built on sectoral division where the organizations work in specific work scopes having impact on comprehensive community development, and with recognizing the importance of all civil work themes, the reason calls for setting objective standards based on which specific organizations should be invited to participate in different forums according to the key field of interest to each one of them, on this basis, the Ministry’s invitation to non-working organizations in corruption fighting to this kind of forums is giving priority to non-professional standards and taking interest in the appearance on the account of content and results.

The signatory organizations have no intention to enter into a feud with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, despite the fact that numerous Ministerial practices are consolidating this approach, still, they are recording a position rejecting stereotyping civil work, along with drawing attention to the danger of continuation to overlook the defense human rights aspects from the executive authority’s account during addressing reform issues in general, and corruption fighting specifically, and they warn of insistence on preferring the people of trust over the people of experience, as well as taking into consideration the political and security classifications.

Signatories                                                                        

1. Partners for Transparency,
2. The Arab Program for Human Rights Activists,
3. Egyptian without Borders,
4. The Integrity and Transparency Studies and Programs for Human Rights Foundation