By Omnia Desoukie / Daily News
Egypt

CAIRO: Over the past two decades, the Egyptian political playground has experienced various political and social forces that helped create a platform for people to express their opinions freely without any restrictions.
These forces are the human rights organizations, the key civil players in Egypt. However, despite their growing number, their effectiveness is always brought into question; especially given the fact that Egypt stood before the Universal Periodic Review twice this year to review its current human rights condition.

The first human rights organization in Egypt, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), was founded in 1985.
“During the mid 80s and early 90s, there wasn’t any other human rights organization except EOHR … we had to work in complete objectivity,” said Tarek Zaghloul, executive director for EOHR.
Today Egypt is home to more than 40–50 human rights organizations with different agendas. “The topics have changed, now we fight for different causes and the internet helped facilitate our communication with various entities,” Zaghloul said.

Accordingly, human rights organizations in Egypt are divided into two groups. The first group works intensively on monitoring and exposing human rights violations and offering legal aid for individuals.
“People started to trust us [human rights organizations], when they file complaints and find that the NGOs are the ones that stand by them, assisting them with lawyers,” explained Zaghloul.
The role of human rights organizations includes lobbying the government to stop practices they consider abusive.

“There are two ways to pressure the government either through the court or through the media,” explained researcher Karim Abdul Rady, from the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI).

The second group works on civic education, raising awareness and publishing reports including annual reports. However, these organizations are not concerned with individual cases.

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