Project description

Title: Promoting Women’s Rights in Egypt
Commissioned by: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)
Country: Egypt
Overall term: August 2007 to July 2010

Context

The Arab Human Development Report 2002 points to the social, economic and political exclusion of women as one of the three core deficits of Arab societies. Despite the considerable progress in women's status in Egypt, discriminatory legal provisions are still for the most part an everyday reality. Local practices and traditions are based on patriarchal values and severely limit the social, political and economic participation of women. During the last two decades, Egyptian civil society has played an important role in efforts to achieve the legal equality and equal treatment of women. The results and effectiveness of civil society initiatives are greatly hampered by rivalry, competition for donor funding and the lack of cooperation, however.

Objective

Egyptian women's rights organisations join forces to exercise influence on politics and legislative developments in order to achieve legal equality and equal treatment for women.

Approach

The project consists of three complementary components:

1. A coordination team comprising the partner organisations and project representatives facilitates processes such as planning, introduction, monitoring and evaluation.
2. Local subsidies are made available to the partner organisations in order to carry out jointly planned measures in a coordinated way.
3. The partner organisations are supported in acquiring the knowledge and skills they lack.

The project partners are nine civil society organisations. The project approach is open and wide-ranging, and is largely controlled by the partner organisations. Legal and political advisory services, further training courses, PR campaigns as well as activities to provide direct support and advice for Egyptian women and their families are just as much part of this as education and information targeted at young men and male political decision-makers.

Experience is integrated into the project work and used at the same time to develop measures that strengthen the partner organisations. On account of the wide range of partners, innovative approaches can be applied and multifaceted cooperations entered into. Cooperation is intensive and based on joint learning and mutual support.

Nine different civil society organisations have joined the cooperation network. The current theme of their work is the reform of family law. The coalition is currently collecting proposals from Egyptian civil society for the reformulation of the Egyptian law on civil status. A joint document with recommendations is to be submitted to the committees officially tasked with the amendment. Great hopes are invested in this document, especially since the official agencies have declared their willingness to include the recommendations in the amendment process. If the recommendations of the non-governmental organisations are adopted in the new text of the law, the legal situation of women in Egypt will see a decisive improvement in the future.

Results achieved so far

Six diverse civil society organizations have entered the project cooperation network. Basic principles of cooperation, a vision and a current topic of joint cooperation (informal marriage practices) have been agreed upon; a draft operational plan has been finalized and signed for implementation in April 2006. 
After six month of cooperation the first impacts are being achieved. The joint learning process and the direct implementation of conclusions and recommendations derived from it, is seen by all partners organizations as a very positive achievement. A first press conference was jointly analyzed and the lessons learnt derived from this analysis were successfully implemented in the second joint press-conference. The efficiency as well as the outreach of the coalition has improved.
Specific interests of individual organizations (of example in PR) are increasingly moving into the background, while a group identity of the coalition is taking hold. Decision-making was agreed to follow a consensus by all partners. Only if this is not possible to achieve, a compromise solution is attempted and only as a last resort decisions are being made by majority vote. This decision on consensus is build on the recognition that the different partners have different approaches and these should be respected.
Joint planning sessions are also conduct more professional and in an open and constructive climate. On the operational level, but not yet on the management level, cooperation is very effective and colleagues have become friends. This increased trust enables the coalition to work more effectively and to avoid extensive bureaucracy.
In capacity building the coalition partners support each other pro bono and in areas that already move beyond the activities planned in the Operational Plan.
While lobby-work, research and press activities are on track, the support for women in local communities is lagging behind. It became clear, that cooperation in clearly timed, geographically limited activities proved to be much easier to implement than long-term cooperation in the local communities themselves.

Further Information

• Local website of the programme (in Arabic)
  www.nwroegypt.org