Civil society groups were abruptly barred on Wednesday from delivering scheduled addresses at the third Anti-Corruption Conference currently underway in the Qatari capital of Doha. Scheduled presentations by civil-rights watchdogs Transparency International and the Arab Civil Coalition were both cancelled at the last minute, even though officials from both organizations were officially registered to participate as speakers at the event. Civil society activists saw the development as a "dangerous precedent" reflecting a desire on the part of certain regimes to "marginalize the role of civil society" in violation of international anti-corruption conventions. According to Yasser Abdel Gawad, member of the Egyptian Coalition to Consolidate Integrity and Transparency, most presentations made at the conference focused only on recent anti-corruption drives by various governments. Civil society organizations, meanwhile, were not given a chance to deliver their speeches, said Abdel Gawad. Sources at the conference say that the Egyptian government, during a closed-door session, proposed that the role of local civil society organizations be confined to merely reporting incidents of corruption without providing accompanying analysis or recommendations. The proposal -- which was supported by the United Arab Emirates -- also called for barring such organizations from direct contact with the international community, in violation of anti-corruption conventions to which Egypt is signatory. Moreover, the Egyptian proposal called for making international "corruption inspections" optional, even though European governments participating in the event unanimously agreed that such inspections should be compulsory. The proposal also called for restricting financing of inspections to the United Nations rather than from international donors. Egypt further proposed that regular corruption reports only be published in abbreviated, rather than complete, versions, and that only officially-recognized civil society organizations be allowed to work in the field. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
