2018

1) Social Justice and Public Policies: Research and Training,(2018) in cooperation with the Swiss Cooperation Office in Cairo

The aim of this project is exploring the possibility of creating a social protection networks to ensure a just, equitable public services provision, more specifically Health, Education, Housing, and Social security services.

In this regard, the outputs of the project were:

– A book on public policies and social justice in Egypt. It contains analytical papers that dealt with the four sectors and how public policies have affected the position of social justice in providing services: health, education, housing, and social security.

– Seven policy recommendations papers on the following topics: a fair policy for social security in Egypt, addressing the phenomenon of private education in Egypt, the right of medicine in Egypt, the general budget to ensure social justice in Egypt, drug pricing policies in Egypt, and the new rent law in Egypt.

– Four reports on dialogue sessions attended by a variety of stakeholders including researchers, experts, and members of civil society.

2) Project ” Needs and demands of civil society in the Arab region (2018) in cooperation with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria.”

The project aimed to support the needs of civil society organizations in the Arab region to be able to play their role in the process of democratization in the region, and to improve the status of civil society associations and resolve conflicts in the countries of the region. And finally, recommending ways to enhance the effectiveness of civil society in democratization, social justice and peace building at the local / grassroots level. This was done by identifying the needs and demands of civil society in the Arab region after the changes that the region witnessed in recent years, considering the diverse contexts, the diversity of organizations, frameworks, and different legal and political challenges. The study targeted eight Arab countries, each of which represents a different type of change after the events of 2011: Egypt and Tunisia (regime change), Morocco and Jordan (reform from within the system), Iraq and Lebanon (influence on the civil society movement) Yemen and Syria (the collapse of the state).

As for the project outputs, they can be divided into two parts:

The first is related to knowledge acquisition and production. Through the in-depth study that was conducted, which combined qualitative and quantitative techniques, the project was able to identify the needs and demands of civil society in the Arab region after the changes it witnessed in recent years. The project outputs related to this section are:

– A book on “the needs and demands of civil society in the Arab region.”

– Three policy recommendation papers addressing civil society institutions, decision-makers, and international financing organizations.

– Presentation of the results of the field study on the needs and demands of civil society in the region (Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon)

The second part of the output is related to building and expanding networks of those interested in supporting civil society organizations in the Arab region. The project has been able to expand the network of people in support of civil society organizations in the Arab region. The interactions between this network and the exchange of experiences are important as they allow bridging the gap between theory and practice.

3) Project ” Journalism and Media in Changing Contexts: A Look at the Local Journalism ” (2018) in cooperation with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria

This project is the third in a series of cooperation between the “Arab Forum for Alternatives for Studies” and the Swedish Institute in Alexandria “on the media. The project aims to study the local press in the Arab region and its position to draw conclusions about the way the press and the media are affected by the changing contexts in the Arab region politically, socially and economically. The importance of the project is that studies and projects on media in the Arab region rarely focus on local journalism, and this was done by trying to combine research effort, writing research papers and some new ideas in the field of journalism and media, and presenting journalism skills by journalists who combined the experience of practicing academic press with a selection of influential journalists and professional experience in their environment.
The project outputs were as follows :

– A book on “Local Journalism in the Arab Region” which collected all case studies in Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, as well as explanatory papers, an introduction and a theoretical chapter on challenges.

– Mapping the local press in the Arab region (Egypt – Tunisia – Lebanon), which consists of three reports identifying the local press in three countries as examples, one from the Maghreb region, one from the Levant and one from the center.

– Expanding the network created with the first phase of the project among media professionals and experts from different countries in the region, which includes experts from Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. In addition, there was an exchange of experiences with experts from Sweden who provided various insights from their experience to the discussion about the local press.