Revealing foreign-funded Egyptian Organizations

400 million US dollars were funded to Egyptian Civil society organizations Egypt’s Popular Socialist Coalition revealed in a report that 400 million US dollars were funded to Egyptian Civil society organizations by bodies of foreign aid in Egypt last year. The money funded to the economic and social development organizations in Egypt, the majority of them in provinces, was mainly given to Cairo and Port Said, just as human rights organizations fought over 50 million Egyptian pounds to split between them, dedicated to their human rights and democracy programs. The amount of money given to Human rights organizations increased after the revolution by going up to 300 million Egyptian pounds, in a bid to support elections and democracy in the upcoming stage.  
Women’s and children’s organizations received 20 million Egyptian pounds from the funds, while 80% of the funds went to the organizations set up by the government. The National Council for Women was the first to receive the highest funding for their programs which included issuing identity cards for women, and programs working on political and economic empowerment, in addition to the preparation of new Family Laws. The second highest funded programs were those of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood; their programs included programs working for children on the streets and creating a child help line and for the legislation of children’s rights. In third place, those were followed by funding for the National Council for Human Rights for their programs on election monitoring and for their Spanish program for the support of organizations and Citizen’s Complaints’ Office.  
According to the report, calls between the Republican Institute, the American National Democratic Institute, the American Freedom House, Ives Institute for Elections and the Ministries of International cooperation and Foreign Affairs regarding finding a solution to the problems they caused by directly funding civil society organizations during the transitional phase Egypt was going through after the revolution, without complying with the rules set by the Egyptian government. Both ministries completely refused to authorize them to set up offices and work in Egypt.  
The report pointed out that the Arab Organization for Human Rights has refused on a number of occasions taking any funding, which was of a huge amount, from the foreign funding parties for their Egypt projects, even though they were suffering during the financial crisis especially after members of the Board of Trustees could not donate any money to them, and due to the reason that some are old-aged and are busy with issues other than human rights. It is worth mentioning that the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights is one of the biggest in Egypt and receives limited funding for its activities from German donors.  
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement gets more funding from the European Union than any other human rights organization, while Nijad Al Boree gets the most regular funding from the USAID for its projects.
"United Group,” a not-for-profit company headed by lawyer Nijad oAlboreen received foreign funding from Freedom House in conjunction with Nidal Mansour, Director of the Center for the Protection of Journalists, Jordan, to implement a regional project for youth on the messengers of freedom. The Association of Prisoners' Rights along with the Arab Organization for Penal Reform, a profit company headed by Mohamed Zare’e, received 150 thousand Euros of European funds in order to complete a project for building a network for lawyers for victims of torture and cruel treatment in organizarions.
The Egyptian Democratic Institute received 700 thousand US dollars in the past two years for three projects. Andalus Institute for Tolerance Studies received regular funding from German and Dutch donors and from the European Union for their media projects for “Our Freedom” Radio.  
Deposed President Mubarak’s government set up a number of NGOs as a tool for defending him and for assaulting respectable old organizations in Egypt, one of them being the “Her Majesty” Foundation. The Egyptian Prosecution is currently investigating this in order to reach the truth behind this funding as to how it was pursued and the aims of it.