Funding Cuts for Egyptian NGO’s

In a phone conversation with al-Shorouk newspaper (in Arabic), Saad el-Din Ibrahim accuses the American Embassy of supporting the Egyptian regime by squeezing civil society organizations that are not registered as NGOs with the Egyptian government. Ibrahim explained that the U.S. had cut its funding to all civil society groups, except for the “government-organized NGOs,” or GONGOs, which Ibrahim described as a bureaucratic creation of the Egyptian regime. He also described Margaret Scobey, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, as “the secretary of the Egyptian regime” and that she “defends the regime as if she works for it.” Finally, Ibrahim mentioned that “the plan is clear, the Americans will concede to the Egyptian government demands, and they will wait for what the Egyptian government will offer in return, but they will get nothing –since resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is not in the Egyptian’s government interest.”

Mohamed Abdel Salam with Bikya Masr reports that Margaret White, media attache with the U.S. embassy in Cairo, has responded to Ibrahim’s accusations saying, “there had not been any change in the commitment of the government of the United States to promote democracy and human rights and the development of civil society in Egypt.”  She goes on to state that unregistered NGO’s will continue to receive American support and that steps are being taken to reduce the impact of overall funding cuts to civil society development in Egypt.  Abdel Salam cites POMED’s recent publication “The Federal Budget and Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2010,” to confirm the recent cuts in fundinf for Egyptian civil society and views as unclear what funding will be available specifically for non-registered NGO’s.