Dr. Abdel Aziz Hegazy, President of the General Federation of NGOs and Former Prime Minister, launched a sharp attack on a number of NGOs due to their financial deviations and poor disbursement of funds. He said during the round table discussions on the proposed amendments to the law of NGOs at the National Council for Human Rights yesterday that he asked the Central Auditing Agency to prepare a report on these NGOs, wondering why some of them get millions of pounds while others get nothing, contending that some countries finance them for certain purposes. For his part, Moataz el-Fogeiry, executive director of the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies, said the Federation of NGOs is evidence of a guardianship over civil society organizations, wondering: “How can all the civil society organizations of Egypt are forced to join a union that the President of the Republic appoints 10 of its members, including its president.”
He criticized the recent amendments by the government to the NGOs law as restricting the work of these organizations under the pretext of national security. Hafez Abu Seada, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, said NGOs in Egypt work under an oppressive and authoritarian regime. He said that the government is for investment liberalization and should therefore also liberate the civil society organizations from all restrictions.
He said the National Council for Human Rights suggested amending the NGOs law no. 48 of 2002 to allow NGOs to select the administrative body that they would register at without license. It also asked that only the judiciary should have the authority to dismantle the NGOs.
The Council also called for the freedom of NGOs to receive funding for their activities, provided they announce the sources and how they would spend these funds, while ensuring the right of the NGOs to resort to justice in case of objection by the administrative body. It also said that a delayed response of one month to the requests by NGOs for funds should be taken as approval of such funds.
