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41 lines
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:ID: fbac0f86-e792-4068-8b54-11cec66470d9
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#+title: DHSF TED Talk: How my interest in libraries is helping human rights in Egypt
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* One line message
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Even in very difficult times, policy work can still be useful
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In the period 2011-2013, as the country was still in flux and chances for affecting public policy seemed more plausible, I was asked to become a policy expert in a new area every six months. coordinate collective efforts to critique the current policy and propose new ones, with detailed legal language: telecom regulation, freedom of information, whistle-blowing and national security, data protection, so-called cyber crime... While my comrades were clashing with security in down Cairo a few steps away, I wore ties and suits and took our bills into parliament and government ministries, and even wrote speeches to parliamentarians who were too shy to present their own bills and preferred to wait for the governments suggestions and 'work on improving them'
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This was a very different than what I had been used to: formerly a prominent blogger and a human rights defender comfortable in the 'watchdog' role and comfortable being in the opposition, I am now supposed to be thinking not only of how to solve problems instead of pointing them out, but also building a working relationship with political adversaries during a messy transition that increasingly begins to look like a non-transition. Needless to say, both these things did not come to me naturally nor nor easily
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These efforts were 'successful', with success in this context meaning not passing good policy, but preventing bad policy from happening and perhaps shif
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As the brief semi-democratic opening began to close in 2013 with another violent change of power, I began reflecting on my policy-engagement and gradually came to this conclusion: The movement is mostly a protest movement, just like Occupy in the US, the anti-austerity movement in the UK and many others around the world. We know very well what we stand against. However, little time has been spent in Egypt contemplating what we are for exactly, beyond the very broad slogan of 'Bread, freedom and social justice'. There were attempts to look at reforming the police force, or the law governing civil society, a movement to review (and drop) Egypt's odious debt, but it was generally partial, based on anecdotal evidence, and almost always without a comprehensive policy suggestion including budget items. It became clear to me that we have come so far in protesting, the snow ball is rolling. Traditional powers have been weakened and are ready to lose, but we are not ready to win. In order not to fail in government like the Muslim Brotherhood did in their brief years in power, we need to have an understanding of the current policy and reality on the ground, have an alternative policy to suggest, and a workable plan to move us from here to there, and to have this across two or three dozen policy areas.
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With this in mind, the amateur librarian in me had one project to support this effort: make the law available. There is currently no way you can find the law in Egypt that is 1) free (even the government sells the law), 2) complete or near-complete (what you find on the internet is anecdotal and dated. Even lawyers struggle to find out what the current law is, and 3) using good technology.
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So I took all of this year so far and collected some 16,200 statutes that were issued in Egypt in the last 120 years and I am currently in the process of organising, indexing them and making them available on the open internet, free of cost and using good technology that can answer questions such as:
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- How many crimes are there in Egypt?
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- List all articles of the law that have a gender aspect to them, or a religion aspect, or any other basis of discrimination
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- show all statues related to policy area X (desert land, transportation, water management...)
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(showing graph slide 1) and I am beginning to show macro results indicating the amount of work that needs to be done. This graph shows the statues plotted over the years they were issued. You can see the spike of the years 1953-1956 where the Egyptian state was re-invented into what we know all too well now.
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You can also see here (slide 2 of the same graph. So there is not much of a visual change to distract the audience) the statutes that I cannot find. There are about 300 of those. Their titles indicate the vast majority of those have to do with the military or the intelligence. Why are these statutes more difficult to find than others. Do we have secret laws in Egypt? We cannot consider those until we have access to them
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Then (slide 3) we have all the statutes that have been made obsolete over the years
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Then we have almost one half of all the statutes issued (slide 4). These are related to the budget. All budget statues are still in effect but they do not affect the situation today.
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Then (slide 5) you have laws tailored to individual cases people. This is abuse of the law or misunderstanding of what a statute is about really.
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Then (slide 6) you have government contracts. These are mostly petroleum and other mining concessions. Very important and specific area, almost a project on its own
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Then you are left with (slide 7) some 4,500 statues still in effect. Two thirds of these are amendments of other statues
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So the actual number is (slide 8) 1,500 statues. No one needs to read each one of those. I mean, I will because it is fun [this is my attempt at a joke], but these statutes cover two or three dozen policy areas, with an average of a few tens of laws per policy area. A working group can read, understand and work on reforming these (or replacing them).
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Closure: [emotive, positive message on how even now in the current circumstances, there is still a lot of work to do] and this work is not ineffective. Today, the newly-created 'media regulator' that confiscates and fines newspapers, blocks websites and censors television drama because of how women characters dress, has been assigned the task of writing a freedom of information bill. The drafting committee started from the bills that were prepared in the past, and because ours is the most comprehensive and best written, they ended up with a bill that is at least 50% written by me. No advocacy, no engagement, nothing. Even today, and because we have done our homework in one policy area, we are still effective. This needs to be replicated in all policy areas. They are ready to lose. We are not ready to win.
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