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The Social Diversions and the Role of Civil Organizations Kareem Abu Halawa
Many conferences, lectures and researches are held about the present and future of the Arabic society. This refers to the transfer of social mind from describing and personifying the reality into trying to know it and suggesting solutions and entrances, which lead for the scientific and rational deal with the reality's phenomena. The mind's hesitation about the phenomenon of civil organizations means an inclusive reference that the role and status of civil organizations did not reach yet to the aimed level that the movements of development and civilization look for in our societies. The attention toward civil organizations is included within an Arabic intellectual speech, which is growing continuously. In this speech, the concepts of civil society, plurality, dialogue and social practices are all combined together to form new characteristics. These characteristics confirm the increasing tendency of the present Arabic speech to adopt the democratic principles and to upgrade the value of participation in the public affairs, besides, not to be limited to the elite. The diversion reference of knowledge is not less important than the social one. During a long period, researches and social studies were concentrated upon the government, its institutions and their role in the society. Now, a new emerging direction called for paying attention to the social activists, whether individuals or civil associations or groups of benefits, and asked about their role in the development and their capacities to assist the social project. This study aims at defining the structure of the Arabic civil organizations and their role in the society. This will be studied through a scheduled choice that asks about the features of this vital social sector and its legal status. Besides, discussing the suitable methods to activate the work of these organizations and to introduce their practiced activities for the projects of development. The analysis would not be completed without a careful attention to the difficulties and obstacles that encounter the work of the civil organizations and restrict their capacities and embed their active assistance to face the problems of development. Thus, the organizations should be encouraged to associate and enlarge their role of social participation as an indispensable necessity for the success and continuity of development. What are the civil organizations? Where are their locations in the social structure, whether in their relations to the government and its institutions or to the civil society? What roles and functions can they do? Till what extent they are able to act these roles? Since more than a decade, the attention to organizations is, gradually, widening on two levels. First, on the level of studying the local social structures and organizing them, after most sociological studies were directed toward the concentrated sample of the government's role. Second, on the level of the enlarged role of these civil organizations, which the international associations and organizations started to care for. This attention was activated in order to enable the Third sector or the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to assist in the public programs as a part of reducing the governmental bureaucracy' strategy and to rise the role of the private sector. The activation and assistance are considered references of the increase of participation and transparency in the operation of development. With the appearance of the dependency school, the developing mind witnessed fundamental diversions that could be concentrated as follows: 1) There was a diversion from the written theories of development into the theory of dependency, which concentrated on interpreting the backwardness and analyzing the non-equivalent international economical relations. 2) The diversion from the concept of national income as a standard of development into the problems of unemployment, the bad distribution of income and the fulfillment of the essential needs. 3) The transfer from confirming the defined economical problems into the attention toward the international problems and restrictions, such as, energy, consuming recourses, hunger, pollution and population. 4) The transfer from treating the developing countries as a group of identical benefits into treating them as a group of dissimilar conditions and benefits. Besides, the concept of the international benefit's accordance disappeared and was substituted by the concept of benefits' conflict, especially, between the advanced countries and the developing ones. All the theoretical efforts combined to construct what was called the 'independent development' with concentration on the problems and crises that such development had to face it, as follows: - The identity crisis: it arouses the problem of limited and narrowed allegiances instead of national loyalty. Moreover, it enlarges at the beginning of the contradictions between the classical education and the modern one. - The legitimacy crisis: it refers to the matter of accordance upon the legitimacy of ruling. This means, the transfer from the inherited traditional foundations of legitimacy into other new modern ones. - The crisis of penetrations: it is about the government and its development policies' ability to reach all the sides of the society, which means the capacity to absorb the whole social structure. - The crisis of distribution: it relates to the resulting problems of the national income's distribution; also, the justness or unfairness of income's distribution. - The crisis of participation: it means the extent of ability to let the biggest possible number of individuals and social groups assist in the political operation and administrate the country affairs. In other words, this attitude relates to democracy. - The crisis of integration: it means to overcome the regional, ethnic and religious differences to reach into higher social resources, which all accord about the loyalty to the country. The dependency school was increasingly criticized and various difficulties faced the policies that related to untying the obligations and breaking the dependency. Also, a whole political and economical diversion followed the end of the cold war and the dissociation of the Socialist system. Besides, these diversions accompanied the new globalization and its scientific, political and economical manifestations. Due to all the mentioned above, there had to be a criticizing revision for the concept of development. Therefore, the concept of the sustainable human development, which was concentrated in the reports of the human development at the beginning of the 90ies, formed a compounded concept that regarded the previous experiences of developments, theoretically and practically.
This does not mean that the concept of the
sustainable human development is final, complete and includes solutions
for the complicated problems of development. Today, the societies
witness several forms of "bad development", like unmerciful development,
futureless development, deaf development, rootless development and the
development without opportunities for work. The crisis of Southeast
Asian countries, in the middle of 1997, lost 30 to 50% of their
currencies' value. The crisis expanded to include The human development report of the year 1996 studies the nature and degree of relation between the economical growth and human development. In an unanticipated initiative, the concept of human development was exactly defined as "enlarging the people's choices by providing job opportunities, income, health, education and political rights that concentrate through the concept of participation". That was through the suggestion of the human development index. This indicates connecting the economical development to an essential aim, which is improving the quality of people's life and guaranteeing a rightful distribution of income, plus, preserving the environment. The report affirms the controversial link between the economical growth and the human development, so that the growth becomes a device and the development becomes an aim. Accordingly, the report confirms the importance of the governments, the institutions of the private sector and the civil organizations' participation in the matters of directing the growth and development's operations. The changes in the civil work sector in many Arab countries refer to a couple of economical and social changes and diversions, with a less degree of political changes. Part of these changes clarified their influence by the international directions, which raised the value of the Third sector. In fact, the NGOs have an important role in dealing with the problems of population, environment and the pauperized groups of people, in addition to the matters of human rights, women and others. What are the factors and reasons, which assisted the change of the civil sector's status, in the Arab countries? What is the new role size of this sector? The careful analyzes of implicit economical and social factors for this diversion clarifies that there are two groups of factors. The first is related to the policies of development, which in spite of failure and success, plus, gaps and deficiencies, most Arab countries followed. The second is related to the changes of the social structures and population construction, which is connected to the new demands and needs that, resulted from the recent developments. Most Arab countries followed monetary and financial policies to face the inflation and the budgets' deficiencies through liberating the market, tending toward privatization and the constructive economical reformations. These policies led to the decrease of the public spending on general services in the sectors of heath, education and social care. This decrease urged the civil sectors to cover and fulfill a side of the populations' demands. In fact, the civil sector has a natural and necessary role because it complements the role of the government. Also, the role of the private sector is enlarging.
The social and economical policies, which
caused the retreat of the governments' role to spend on general services
and social care, paralleled the continuous population's increase in the
Arabic countries. In 1990, the population of the Arab countries was 270
Million inhabitants. The average of population's growth reached (2,6),
which is one of the highest averages in the world. It means that there
are new population's needs and demands, which the governments are unable
to fulfil, especially, when these needs relate to youthful societies,
where the average of ages less than 15 years old, represent 40% of the
total population. In addition, some Arab countries witnessed exceptional
conditions, like wars, beside environmental and natural catastrophes, as
in Due to the second crisis of the Gulf and the increase of the debts and loans in most Arabic countries, in general, it is noticeable that, the development in these countries slowed down during the period from 1991 to 1997ژ(1)گ. The Arab countries depended on the central planned economical policy. Other countries had political policies that depended on the economy of the market and the economical plurality. The comparison between both policies shows that, in spite of supplying the lower economical structure, like industrial and agricultural projects, roads and services, the central policy did not succeed to invest the economical structure. Therefore, it reached the crisis of a closed prospect and actual slow growth because of bureaucracy, routine, and corruption, besides, restricting the initiatives and restraining the investments. This requires the economical reformations, reconstructing the societies, privatization and activating the private initiativesژ(2)گ. As for the second group, most of its countries suffered the aggravated problem of bad distribution of wealth and incomes because of the privatization's procedures, financial reformations, the pressures of both International Bank and Monetary Fund. This led into an aggravated phenomenon of unemployment and the increase of poverty percentage. Therefore, this requires a revision of the negative social effects of the actual developing policies and finding the difficult balance between the policies of the economical liberation and the society development needs beside the social justice. Of course, the differences between the Arab countries in both groups should be noticed. It is clear that paying attention to the civil organizations, being one of the civil society's components in the developing countries, is not separated from two central matters, which these societies face, the Development matter and Democracy. The failure and stumble of the South World societies' development experiences, or the first generation of development, are not hidden anymore. They looked for the accumulation of capital without the accumulation of the human experiences and releasing their capacities. Also, they neglected two essential spans of development, which are the continuity and regarding humans as the purpose of this development and its device at the same time. The second feature of the developing countries experiences' failure is presented in their deficiencies or the undesired rise of the nation participation. Thus, most participation remained superficial and ineffective. The Features of the Civil Sector in the Arabic World: This study tries to define the essential features of the Arabic civil organizations that started in the 19th Century. In fact, the civil work started very early in our social history, which was practiced through (Waqf) Endowment, Zakat and other forms of human donations that constituted mutual values among the civilizations, cultures and religions in many different parts of the world. The forms of Arabic civil organizations vary and differ according to number, date of activity and types. The available information refers to the existence of 70.000 thousand Arabic civil organizations. Thus, there are a huge number of nation initiatives that could be classified according to their activities into four types:
- First: Charitable associations include
the total of civil activities that work in the field of traditional
charity, which depend on the form of donor and donated. While the
percentage of the charitable organizations is 34% of the total civil
organizations in - Second: The organizations of services and social care are civil organizations that activate in many social fields and offer health services, economical and social services for children, women, aged people, family and others. - Third: Development organizations are a new type of civil work organizations, which gradually started to develop in the Arabic societies. The purpose of this type of organizations is to achieve development within a limited local society.
- Fourth: Defensive organizations are
organizations of opinion and effect, advocacy, such as, human rights,
women's rights and disabled rights. Recently
appeared in - Fifth: Various cultural organizations, like literary associations, unions of writers and artists, associations of poetry, novel and story and others, in addition to rehabilitation organizations, training, obliterating illiteracy and others. Although the previous civil organizations differ and vary in types and activities, they share three mutual elements. First, they do not aim at gaining money; second, they are NGOs; third, they offer civil initiatives and nation volunteering to fulfill the needs or the social demands and participate in the operation of development. Specifying my concepts and an attempt to define them: The concept of NGOs refers to a couple of voluntarily social initiatives that activate in different fields, like social services, charitable donations, health, education and cultural services. Besides the attention to the affairs of environment and development, professional training, women rehabilitation, local social development, plus, defending human rights, children rights and others. The civil organizations are localized between the government and its institutions, on one side, and the private sector, which aims at gaining, on the other side. The civil work organizations and the civil society institutions participate in many mutual roles and functions. The definition of "civil society" means "the group of associations and social organizations that work, relatively, independent from the government to achieve different political, economical and social purposes. They include political Parties, associations, unions, cultural clubs, chambers of commerce and industry, craftsmanship and professional organizations". The essential and sufficient condition to establish these connections between the individuals leans on the concept of "citizenship", which is a substitute for the traditional belongingness before establishing cities. On the conceptual level, there is a difference between the domestic society and the civil society in the Arabic society case, which can not be recognized, in the English term, because it unifies both. Actually, the domestic society is established according to the connections and primordial organizations that the individual belongs to at the time of birth. Thus, there are anticipated considerations without giving this early belonging any margin of freedom to chose. On the other hand, Sa'ad Al Deen Ibraheem defines the civil society as 'the total voluntarily social organizations, non-inherited and non-governmental, which care for the individual and enlarge his capacities for effective participation in the public life'ژ(3)گ. This was confirmed by the German sociologist Tunnis who according to Hegel distinguished between, first, the term of 'Burgarlleische Gesslschaft', civil society, which referred to the forms of modern voluntarily social joint that built upon free belonging and benefit. The second term was 'Burgarleische Gemainschaft', domestic society, which depended on the forms of inherited social jointsژ(4)گ. In the Arabic culture, we use similar and many terms to refer to the civil organizations. Thus, when we say 'Third sector', we mean to distinguish it from the governmental sector and from the private sector that aims at making profit. When we say 'non-governmental organization', we mean the domestic organization that forms with the private organizations, which aim at winnings, what is called the 'civil society', in general. Probably, the decisive distinction between the domestic organizations and the rest of civil society organizations is the following five features: 1 - Volunteering.
2 - 3 - No attempt of making profit. 4 - No attempt of members' personal service. 5 - Participation in the general affairs. These organizations are established according to mutual general attention or aim at working in a specified field. They want to achieve collective benefits or assist the individuals, pauper and needy families. Furthermore, they aim at defending matters, like human rights, women, childhood and others. In comparison, the organizations of the civil society are qualified and successful more than the governmental organizations for different reasons like: 1st) Unlike the governmental organization, the civil organization has a capacity to attract volunteers, gifts and donations; thus, it reduces the costs of work. 2nd) The organizations of the civil society can obtain better information about the needs of the local societies and better methods to fulfill them. In addition, these organizations can define the social groups that deserve to be helped. On the contrary, unlike the civil organizations, the huge faraway bureaucratic institutions from the actual reality prevent them from figuring out the recent social changes. The success of the three sectors, the governmental, civil and private, is related to their capacities of accordance, complementary and dialogue in between to surpass any difficulty that faces the procession of the society development. In case of paradoxes or conflicts, which are natural, the ways of directing the conflict and solving it legally are the guaranteed actual ways for not developing into a negative or destroying conflict, or to hide it until a possible chance appears. In other words, the nature of conflict between the three sectors must be defined and treated, fundamentally, to reach its deep reasons instead of reconciling it temporarily and incidentally. This will guarantee the continuity of development and avoid the fruitless historical conflicts, such as, tribal, sectarian and ethnic conflicts.
The Civil Associations in
Associations and organizations have a long
history in
After the The last stage of the civil associations' development was the supervising stage. Thus, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor supervised the different activities and works of the organizations, gave them directions and supported them financially. In 1974, the activities of the civil organizations were restricted within a general frame that included 13 items.
The organizations in 1) 240 charitable associations that include beneficiary help and beneficiary education associations. 2) 127 cultural associations that include artistic, literary and scientific associations. 3) 203 leagues, clubs and social unions. They include orphanage, nurseries for employed mothers, aged people, disabled, retarded, blind, deaf and dumb, rural clubs and child care organizations. 4) 26 health associations. 5) 29 co-operative associations, which are supervised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.
Due to their role of rehabilitation,
training and services for children and women, probably, the social care
associations are the most civil associations that assist the human
development. Although the number of these associations does not exceed
18% of the total number of the civil associations in
This positive assistance clarifies one
phase of the civil work in
In spite of the important assistance of
the civil associations in - To modernize the organizing laws of these associations according to the recent social and economical changes. Besides, guaranteeing the wide independence of directing, organizing and sketching their own strategy. - To provide the associations with human qualifications. Besides, enabling them to achieve their goals, clearly and transparently, especially, their budgets, financing and distributing their services, to personify the associations' effective participation. - To get rid of obstacles and problems, which face the work of civil associations, mainly: - One) Some people try to make personal benefits. - Two) The spread of paralyzed and favoritism phenomena because of depending on personal and relatives' acquaintances, which lead to employ unqualified cadres. - Three) The secrecy that prevents from discussing any matter within the association. However, these obstacles contradict the minimum provisions of successful civil organizations or institutions. Usually, the provisions of the associations are built upon clear purposes; rules of work according to studied plans and organizing the participants' activities away from bureaucratic routine and complicated procedures.
Therefore, the civil organizations might
become a real partner in the operation of development and economical
reformation that started in The Unlicensed Associations and Forums' Phenomenon:
Although, most of the civil associations
in
The new phenomenon that witnesses big
cultural and social activities in Disregarding the results of the intellectual, political and social activities that raised convulsion writings and responses, the careful analyses clarify a group of references, like: - First, the necessity to widen the margin of movement and democratic expression for the increasing number of people, who perceive their importance of participation in discussing the matters and subjects that relate to the Syrian affair. - Second, according to the new leadership of President Bashar Assad, the vision of economical reformations and fighting corruption, besides, the improvement of public functions became important matters. Therefore, the people of pro-reformation and renovation started to express their view openly through newspapers, local and Arabic magazines. The main important demands are related to the renewal of laws, the termination of the Martial laws, the review of the judicial and educational systems, besides, the successive economical decrees that relate to private banks, universities and administration, in order to reform the public sector and encourage the investment. The economical reformation became a mutual denominator between the government and the rest of social powers. Thus, the conflict is not about the economical reformation but about the possibilities of achieving an economical reformation away from political reformation or before it. The references point out that there are preparations and studies for a new group of laws that concern the widening of political participation. Therefore, a new law for the Parties and printings, which will guarantee the right of issuing private newspapers, will achieve better development.
Disregarding pessimism and optimism, it is
clear that today, Conclusion:
Today, it became clear for all those who
are interested in the civil sector in Assisting the treatment of pauperization, unemployment and illiteracy problems demand, today, upgrading the civil works, to assist effectively in development and participate in treating these problems. This could be achieved through providing new chances for work or to enable the people of low incomes to increase their productivity and other types of help. The most important thing is to transfer from the role of treating the negative results, because of bad income's distribution, to the role of participating in sketching and executing the protective policies, which review the mechanism and methods of distributing incomes inside the society. To achieve the economical or social or cultural development role, civil associations need to modernize their organizing laws, whether in their connections to the government or to the benefited groups. This demands new systems and laws, according to their new roles that relate to organizing their directory councils, defining their supervising directions and their sources of finance.
Throughout these steps, the civil
organizations in __________ Footnotes: 1) Mahmood Abd Al Fadeel, 'Privatization, the Demands of Development, Distribution and Social Justice in the Arab World', a commentary on the lecture of Yaseen Sa'eed No'man, 4th Annual Conference of Arab Center for Strategic Studies, Damascus 2000, p. 7.
2) Nabeel Sukkar, 'The
Economical Reformation in 3) Sa'ad Al Deen Ibraheem (supervisor), 'The Role of the Professional Organizations and Intellectual Forums to Consolidate the Culture of the Civil Society', discussion circles, Iben Khaldoon Center for the Studies of Development, Cairo, 1998, p. 16.
4) Bablo, Norberto, 'Gramci and the
Concept of Civil Society, in Joining Civil Society and the State',
5) General Resources:
- 'The Civil Work in
- 'The Civil
Associations, the Social and Economical Crisis of Development in
- Mohammed Hussein
Bakher, 'The Measurement of Poverty in ESCWA countries',
- Amani Khandeel, 'The
Civil Society in the Arab World', a study for the Arabic civil
associations, Sivicose,
- Kareem Abu Halawa, 'The
Problematic Concept of Civil Society, the Arise - the Development - the
Manifestations', Dar Al Ahali,
- 'The Civil Society
and its Role in Developing Democracy', a group of writers, the
- 'The Civil Society in the United Arab Emirates', Abd Al Halek Abdullah and others, the Association of Sociologists, Sharja, 1995.
- The report of the Human development in
1997, the publications of the United Nations, Foreign sources:
- RICHARD T. INGRAM: TWN BASIC
RESPONSIBILITIES OF NON PROFIT BOARDS, NCNB GOVERNANCE SERIES -1-
- SELDGMAN, ADAM: THE IDEA OF CIVIL
SOCIETY, FREE PRESS,
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