2014

The spring of the Arab people, the crisis of the Arab state: Institutional reform and democratic transition in the Arab world

This project aims at analyzing the state in terms of three state sectors, judiciary, state religious institutions and state owned media in three Arab countries that witnessed a regime change which are Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen in order to come up with recommendations on how to reform these institutions to allow them to better contribute to the democratic reform process, and be more accountable to citizens and responsive to their needs. In other words, the project studies the main challenges facing these institutions, including their institutional capacity, politicization of state institutions, and the lack of political will.

The project also explores what role civil society and external actors like the international civil society and the western donors, can play in the process of reforming these institutions. Three research teams are set up in each country and through the different phases of the project, the teams will seek active participation of the different stakeholders, both from the regime, from state institutions and from civil society. The project studies main challenges facing these institutions, including their institutional capacity and the presence of political well to reform it, and the resistance from within these institutions to reforms. It will explore what role civil society and external actors can play in the process of reforming these institutions. In order to make practical recommendations about reforming these institutions based on a participatory process throughout the project with key stakeholders from the regime, state institutions and civil society. This project is conducted by the Arab Forum for Alternatives, in cooperation with International Development Research Center.

Project on writing policy papers for the Egyptian Parliament:

Arab forum for alternatives organizes a project on writing policy recommendations papers for Egyptian parliamentarians in partnership with Westminster foundation for Democracy. The aim of this project is to write policy recommendation papers addressed to Egyptian parliamentarians, focusing on the main legislations and issues of the political life. The project consists of four main phases: in the first phase, topics are chosen, in a second phase, a group of experts writes policy recommendation papers on each of these topics. The third phase, the papers are discussed in workshops with experts, researchers,  parliamentarians who interested in the topic, and in the last phase, the experts submit the final version of the papers after the discussion, and all papers are then sent  to all the members of parliament.

Project on Public policies and essential services in Egypt:

Arab forum for alternatives organizes a project on Public policies and essential services in Egypt in partnership with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria (SwedAlex). This project will aim to provide different stakeholders and mainly decision makers with visions, strategies and mechanisms to benefit, rationalize and develop the public spending related to the: education, health, housing .

Project on the concept and practices of citizenship after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its impact on Strengthening Women’s rights:

Arab forum for alternatives organizes a project on the concept and practices of citizenship after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its impact on Strengthening Women’s rights, in partnership with Arab forum for citizenship in Transition, and International Peace Institute. The project aims to come up with policy recommendations on specific issues such as citizenship and political and civil rights, citizenship and economic and social rights, citizenship and civil society, religious institutions and the discourse of citizenship.

Project on the spring of youth movements after 2011 revolution:

This project aims to support the democratic culture of youth movements with variant interests that appeared post January 2011, with cooperation between AFA and Swedish institute in Alexandria. In addition, the project aims to promote the networking and teamwork culture among those movements and their members, and providing them with a required academic knowledge, and exchanging experiences among them.

Project on the dialogue among political currents’ youth:

The main object of this project is to strengthen the dialogue among the youth of political currents, to promote the democratic transition in Egypt. With the cooperation between AFA and Norwegian institute of international affairs, the project aims to hold meetings among youth to promote the dialogue and increase the possibility to reach a kind of agreement among them, and to come up with common standards on agreement based on this objects.

Project on developing the Egyptian house of representatives’ bylaw:

The main object of this project between AFA and Regional Center for Mediation & Dialogue is to launch a dialogue process over issuing a new bylaw for the representatives’ house, by gathering the political actors to promote the democratic norms and practice concerning the Egyptian constitution 2013-2014 articles regarding the bylaw.

Project on the citizenship and minorities in Arab Region:

After 4 years of changes in the Arab region, the citizenship issue becomes one of the most popular items in the public debate, especially citizenship of minorities, threats facing them, their future, and the potential gains of their rights, on equal base within their countries. In that regard, AFA and HIVOS foundation aim to raise an academic tackling of this issue.

Project on youth political empowerment:

This project comes from the belief of the importance of youth political empowerment, their political inclusion, and positive impact of this on the transition on the long run. This project as cooperation between AFA and the Danish Egyptian center for dialogue, aims to monitor the reality of youth participation, mainly the partisan one in Egypt, focused on the main political parties in Egypt, the challenges they face within to include, what potentials to be empowered, and final recommendation in this regard.

Social Justice: between socio-economic alternatives and protest movements:

This project aims to try to understand and analyze the various social justice definitions, indicators achieved in the policies followed after the Arab Spring revolutions that erupted in early 2011 where social justice was one of the core direct demands, as well as an indirect demand through the use of slogans such as “dignity” and “freedom”. These two demands are basically associated with social justice in one way or the other, and then we cannot underestimate the role of economic circumstances that lack of social justice in the outbreak that the protest wave, and the ability of the protest movements to impose social justice on the political agenda after the Arab Spring through research in social justice in the Arab spring countries, and how close the policies of the concept of social justice situation, and why protest movements have succeeded or failed in support of social justice policies in their countries.

This project tries to tackle the concept of social justice from this logic using background papers on the complexities of this concept, the relationship between this concept and the changes that took, and are still taking, place in our Arab region and the role of foreign factors, as represented by EU policies. It then presents three case studies, which tackle previous studies in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. It also contains a number of parallel articles to these studies in an attempt to provide different perspectives on issues and countries covered by these studies.

Also it provides a social Justice Guide which presents the concept perspectives, its relations with the rights implications in some models like welfare state, Latin America, the relationship between political Attitudes and economics Choices, and how to read the Budget and international agreements according to Social Justice Perspective. This project is conducted by the Arab Forum for Alternatives, in cooperation with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung North Africa Office.

Towards establishing a think tank to support the Iraqi Parliament (2009-2015)

The general objective of the project is to enhance the capacities of the Iraqi Council of Representatives and its specialized committees in the fields of : education, public health, gender, transparency and accountability.

This objective can be met through the establishment of a think tank specialized in parliamentary affairs, providing consultancy, lobbying and providing the parliament with the necessary studies and policy recommendations in the fields mentioned, through university professors specialized in Parliamentary Affairs and public policies. This project is conducted by the Arab Forum for Alternatives, in cooperation with Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), and Dar Al-Khibrah Organization (DKO).

In the last five years DKO provides the Parliament By tens of policy papers in its 4 fields of work, it arranged many conferences, workshops and annual seminars with the parliamentarians and employees of the parliament.