Activists differ on their level of confidence in governments
CAIRO: Members of the American University in Cairo club Cairo-to-Camps held an event on Wednesday, Sept. 20 which highlighted the many ways to raise awareness and aid money for the people of Lebanon. Each summer, the club sends a delegation of volunteers to perform community service in the Shatila and Burj El-Barajneh refugee camps in south Beirut, but this year the war forced the trip’s cancellation.
In response, they have refocused their efforts on solidarity, raising funds for post-conflict reconstruction and highlighting the specific plight of refugees in a newly war-torn country. Wednesday’s event brought together activists from several different campaigns, who each shared visions of activism and solidarity that differed sharply over the appropriate role of the state.
Before the war, the Palestinian camps in Lebanon were among the most dire in the region, says Muhammed Yousri of the Li-Beirut campaign. This was primarily because of the neglect of the Lebanese government.
“They lacked support from Lebanon and had almost no social services, he told the audience, mainly composed of Westerners and African refugees. “The Lebanese government stops people from bringing new building materials into the camps so there can be no legal expansion. If this policy does not change, in places like Shatila and Burj El-Barajneh, they will never be able to rebuild after the attack.
Reflecting this suspicion of the government, the Li-Beirut Campaign chose not to work with the Egyptian or Lebanese states. The campaign organized a series of cultural and artistic events to highlight the suffering of people in Lebanon. Rather than asking for donations, which would require legal registration as a charity, Yousri says his campaign decided to sell products like postcard-sized artwork. All profits were then donated to a charity of the campaign’s choosing, and were not given to a state agency.
Sawsan Mostafa, of the T-Shirts for Lebanon Project, highlights a different approach. Mustafa was in Lebanon for an interfaith dialogue camp when the war began, and had to flee the country through Syria and Jordan over the course of 10 stressful days before finally returning to her family in Cairo.
“I never thought I would witness a war, she said, telling the crowd that her ordeal taught her the power of intercultural understanding and the importance of standing up for what you believe in. When she returned to Egypt, she was struck by “the passiveness and negativity of all governments, especially Arab governments.
Frustrated by the apathy she saw around her, Mustafa decided to do something. She and two friends designed and printed the first 100 T-shirts in their campaign, which bore the slogan: “Silent No More: Stop This War. The shirts sold out in a day, and the more they printed, the more they sold. At first, all proceeds were donated to Caritas, a charity that was giving aid to refugees and other stateless persons, such as Palestinians, Sudanese and Iraqis inside Lebanon who were unable to flee the country and were often among the neediest.
But as the project garnered more and more attention, Mustafa decided to sign an agreement with the Lebanese embassy.
“What we were doing wasn’t completely safe until we signed the deal with the embassy, she said. “We were just three girls in a room making T-shirts, we weren’t registered as an NGO, and if someone wore one of our shirts to a protest in Tahrir and someone asked ‘Where did you get that shirt?’ it could have led to trouble for us.
Now, all proceeds from the T-Shirts for Lebanon Project will be deposited into the bank account of the Lebanese embassy, and the project has gained the legal protection of working with an international embassy. There are drawbacks to this, though.
Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian physician who was in Lebanon during the war, points out some of the potential dangers of working so closely with a government.
“There is always the fear of regional discrimination against the south, he says. “Aid needs to be distributed with transparency and justice. Right now there is no transparency in distributing aid, the money goes to the state and there is no accountability, nothing.
A fourth speaker, a Lebanese businessman based in Cairo, Marsel Amineddine, took issue with Abdullah’s worries. “All aid money will go to a government authority, the High Commission for Refugees, which distributes money according to a list of high priorities, he says. Concerns about graft and regional discrimination – how the Lebanese government will choose what places would be put on the high priority list – were left largely unaddressed.
Amineddine organized a very lucrative fundraiser in Egypt, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Telecommunication, Mobinil and Vodafone, which allowed people to donate money by calling a hotline. In his experience, “There were no problems with the Egyptian government. All the authorities tried to facilitate whatever we needed. Everything was free, and all user fees were rescinded.
In closing, Abdullah reminded the panel that, despite their differences, they should continue in their solidarity work, and could even learn a few things from the Lebanese. “The movement among young Lebanese is amazing, he says, “across all the different sects and backgrounds. Egyptian solidarity efforts are important, but most of them are not well known to people in Lebanon. We must do more to let them know that we are here.
