Capacity Building
Next to the increased attention on the facilitation of domestically generated democratic reform agendas, EPD is investing in enhancing the capacities of Democracy CSOs. As from March 2011, EPD has been supporting an organisation of the civil society focused on the monitoring of public expenditures and the respect of socio-economic rights in the public budget propositions.
The general mission of the organisation is to analyse the state budget from a rights perspective and provide documentation of violations of socio-economic and cultural rights. It also seeks to promote the concept of a "participatory budget" which involves citizens directly in policy and decision-making by simplifying the budget's technical language for the general public. Our partner is also working on the issue of corruption in Egypt.
The democratic uprising which began on 25 January 2011 has revealed a lot of power abuses and illegal practices which were conducted under the authoritarian regime.
The new situation provides new opportunities to work on transparency and they must be seized now. The window of opportunity is now in order to identify all the practices from the past which might not stop from a day to another. But understanding these practices and identify the actors of the system will ease preventing these in the future.
As of 2012 EPD will also operate a micro-grant scheme for capacity building of young and small democracy CSOs and is still looking for sponsors in order to implement that necessary project.
Furthermore, a bigger contribution and attention will be allocated to the building of coalitions within the civil society in order to give it a stronger voice in the democratisation process. The review of the European Neighbourhood policy is supposed to provide an important space to the civil society in the monitoring of the conditionalities on democracy and human rights in the Association Agreement. This monitoring process might open a space for cooperation between civil society organisations, both European and Egyptian.