Draft NGO law to be released tomorrow

Minister of Solidarity Ahmed al-Borai has announced that a draft law on non-governmental associations will be made public tomorrow.

A legal committee formed by Borai for this purpose composed the draft. Privately owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported Wednesday that committee members differ on the issue of foreign funding.

Lawyer Khaled Ali and director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) Bahy Eddin Hassan had proposed that NGOs should be able to receive and spend foreign funding without being required to report to an Egyptian administrative body.

Lawyer Negad al-Borai and Ezz Eddin Farghal, head of the Federation of Civil Society Organizations, opposed proposal, however. Farghal told Al-Masry Al-Youm that he and others opposed “absolute freedom” being given in terms of NGO funding.

Foreign funding of NGOs has long been at the center of political controversy in Egypt, and the 2002 law currently governing NGO activity has been criticized as for allowing excessive interference and control of civil society activity by state bodies.

In June of this year 43 foreign NGO workers were handed down prison sentences for illegally receiving funding and other offences following a December 2011 raid on six foreign NGO offices in Cairo.

The draft currently under consideration is the latest in a succession of drafts submitted following the fall of the Hosni Mubarak regime in February 2011.