CAIRO: The Egyptians Against Corruption movement is calling on international aid agencies to pressure the Egyptian government into abiding by international agreements and working to end corruption. In its newly launched campaign, the group plans to collect signatures from Egyptian citizens, including intellectuals and activists, and present a petition to international donors that calls for more pressure to be placed on the government towards this end. These international funding organizations include the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as the European Union Commission and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The decision came after the movement granted Shoukry Azer, president of the committee to protect social insurance, this year s prize for fighting corruption. Media spokesperson Buthayna Kamel told Daily News Egypt that Egyptians Against Corruption aims at pressuring funding agencies as well as companies to take the necessary action against the corruption that results from aid dependency. We will tell all aid agencies that they are destroying our country and spreading corruption by continuing to offer aids and loans to a system that is already drenched in corruption, said Kamel. We will ask aid companies to stand by our side since they are suffering from that very same corruption that is hindering their progress, she added. Pervasive corruption in Egypt has reached serious levels, she added, referring to the latest Transparency Report, which ranked Egypt 115 out of 180 countries in its corruption index. Meanwhile, George Ishak, general coordinator of opposition movement Kefaya, said he will support the campaign by providing its organizers reports that detail incidents of corruption that have been drafted by researchers of Kefaya. The documents reveal incidents of corruption, with a particular emphasis on managerial corruption that is directly attributed to the government, according to Ishak. We are supporters of the campaign and we will send all the files we prepared to aid agencies, he said. On the other hand, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center Ahmed Seif El Islam said, Any call on stopping aid or linking it the notion of fighting corruption will harm citizens more than the government. Combating corruption requires an internal process that includes raising people s awareness to the importance of standing against corruption, El Islam told Daily News Egypt, adding that issues such as corruption can only be fought through a national confrontation stemming from within the country itself not through the help of external forces. The Transparency Report was released earlier this month by the International Organization for Transparency under the title, Corruption in Poor Countries is a Deadly Human Phenomenon. The report has been released annually since 1995 with the help of international businessmen, experts and scholars. International investors partially base their decision on the finding of this report
