Syria Today | Access All Areas?

Access All Areas?

By Dalia Haidar

Since President Bashar al-Assad’s accession to power in 2000, hundreds of charities and associations have been granted licenses by the government to work in the fields of rural poverty, social, economic and environmental development, education, medical care and women’s issues. Together, these organisations have breathed some form of diversity and semi-independent life back into the country’s civil society sector, which had previously been all but limited to Ba’athist-controlled populist unions.

The rebirth of non-government controlled, socio-economic development organisations in Syria’s civil society sector has largely come under the First Lady Asma al-Assad’s auspices. In 2001 she set up FIRDOS, the country’s first non-governmental rural development agency and in 2005 put her weight behind SHABAB, an organisation focused on fostering cultural entrepreneurship among the country’s youth. In 2007, the first lady also backed the establishment of the Syria Trust for Development, today an umbrella organisation for FIRDOS and SHABAB and the country’s most active development associations.

The establishment of FIRDOS paved the way for a new form of civic participation in Syria. Today, some 1,500 private charities and other development organisations have been set up, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour, bringing back some momentum to Syria’s civil society sector. This momentum is part and parcel of a government strategy over the past decade to promote partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors to tackle some of the country’s most serious socio-economic problems. The vision is summed up in the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2006-2011), which concedes that the role civil associations and institutions have played in socio-economic development has not been “as good as desired” and calls for “radical changes” in order to activate and enhance the capabilities of civil society.

A growing number of organisations have implemented a range of crucial development and cultural projects over the past decade: FIRDOS has distributed SYP 138m (USD 3m) in interest-free loans to poor rural communities; SHABAB has provided training to 87,000 young people; children’s cancer support charity BASMA has supported 1,700 children and their families; women’s rights group the Syrian Women Observatory has successfully lobbied to increase penalties for honour killings.

Yet the lack of licensed advocacy NGOs and political lobbying groups highlights a narrow concept of civil society still upheld by the government. Moreover, all organisations – developmental or otherwise – remain subject to the restrictive Law No. 93 of 1958 and the amendments to it which came with Decree 224 of 1969 (for more on the legal framework governing civil society, see page 36)

A new legal framework

Talk of amending the law has been ongoing for more than five years. In an interview in September 2007, Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Diala Hajj Aref told Syria Today: “There is a committee of experts, including legal advisors and experts from civil society and the NGO community who have put together an NGO draft law. We are studying the draft law very carefully… the ministry will complete its work on the law, then it will be passed on to the government for consideration and then it will be issued.”

A fresh dose of hope that change is imminent came in January when Syria held its first international development conference titled ‘The Emerging Role of Civil Society in Development’. Opening the conference, Syria’s first lady announced that a new law would soon be passed to provide space for civil society to work with the government in designing and implementing development policies.

Referring to the 300 percent increase in the number of organisations operating in the country over the past five years, the first lady rebutted claims that the government lacks a serious commitment to implement change.

“This expansion and diversification is not a coincidence,” she said. “It reflects the firm political will in Syria to put NGOs at the forefront of the national development process, and the government’s confidence in the particular contribution that NGOs are best placed to make.”

The conference was positively received and garnered international press overage, with local media reports hailing the event as an “indirect recognition” of all NGOs in Syria.

Doubts remain

Yet activists working in unlicensed advocacy NGOs remain dubious. They have expressed disappointment that they were not invited to the conference.

Observers also express concern that while covering the conference, the Ministry of Information and state press outlets continued to use the term ‘paternal society’ instead of ‘civil society’ in their Arabic-language coverage. This, they claim, signals that the will to loosen government control over the sector remains limited.

Just how far the government’s paternal hand should stretch in shaping civil society is subject of debate. While many advocacy activists claim it should be severed, other development specialists say it is integral if anything concrete is to be achieved.

“In any country when you are working on the scale of changing the mindset you need the government, especially in a country like Syria which has a centrally planned economy,” Yamama al-Oraibi, head of SHABAB, said.

Maintaining independence in organisations which the government assists is a day-to-day concern, Omar Abdulaziz al-Hallaj, executive director of the Syria Trust for Development which is partly-funded be the government, said.

“Yes, there is a risk of being financed by the government, but what is even more risky is to go for the private sector alone, or international organisations alone to ask for finance,” Hallaj said. “The only guarantee for the survival of civil society is to leave all the doors open in front of it while it is gaining the experience of building its capabilities and proving its ability to institutionalise itself.”

Mutual suspicion

Since the brief period from the middle of 2000 to the end of 2001 which saw much social and political activism following President Bashar al-Assad’s accession to power, advocacy NGOs, human rights groups and media watchdogs in the civil society sector have struggled to openly operate and gain legal recognition. While these groups say they do not have a political agenda, they complain that authorities often accuse them of standing in opposition to the government. This, they say, erodes their public standing.

Advocacy NGOs in Syria’s civil society sector have also been damaged by their own internal problems. Activists regularly accuse one another of working for the government. This fosters a climate of mutual suspicion rather than cooperation and has lead many advocacy associations to splinter into smaller, ineffectual groups.

“The splits in some human rights organisations come down to political affiliations,” Hassan Abbas, a Syrian researcher in cultural issues, said. “Another reason is the existence of the ‘leader mentality’ which is also a result of the absence of democracy.”

In agreement, Bassam Kadi, head of the Syrian Women Observatory (SWO), an unlicensed NGO focused on women and children’s rights, said the lack of coordination between advocacy organisations is a key challenge to progress.

“We are working alone, we have no partnership with any other NGO in Syria,” Kadi said. “Civil society organisations need to work together otherwise the situation will deteriorate.”

Effecting change

While independent advocacy NGOs in Syria’s civil society sector lobbying for reform may well be limited by a heavy legal framework, successful socio-political campaigns have been carried out.

In an online campaign titled ‘Stop Honour Crimes’ in 2005, Kadi’s SWO collected some 10,000 signatures for a petition which demanded that Syria’s Penal Code be amended to enforce stricter penalties on men who commit so-called honour killings. Kadi's campaign was part of a wider effort among local media outlets, civil society organisation and individual activtist, as well as a growing public concern about the issue. In 2008, President Assad issued a decree which amended Article 548 of the Penal Code to extend the prison sentence for those found guilty of committing honour crimes to a minimum of two years.

“In the beginning reactions were very bad, but now it is different,” Kadi said. “Even in the media, it is obvious that attitudes have changed in favour of denouncing violence against women.”

More recently, in June 2009, social activitsts, local media and community representitives spearheaded an aggressive online campaign protesting against a draft law to Syria’s Personal Status Law of 1958 which introduced changes that they regarded as regressive. Following public outcry, the prime minister officially cancelled it.

In 2003, meanwhile, the Social Initiative Society, led by a group of women, managed to collect 15,000 signatures for a petition lobbying the government to change an article about child custody in Syria’s Personal Status Law. In response, the government amended the article, extending the period mothers can have custody over their daughters to 15 years of age and their sons to 13 years of age.

Such achievements, however, have been hard won. Pressure has not only come from the government – while collecting signatures for their petition, members of the Social Initiative Society were denounced at Friday prayers in a number of mosques in Damascus, during which clerics called them “infiltrators” and “agents of the West”

“Civil society groups in Syria have been disappointed, they do not have the right of freedom,” Abbas said. “Many efforts in the field continue to be restricted. Some people describe the work by civil society groups as weak, but in fact they have been weakened.”

While the impact a new legal framework will have on the sector remains uncertain, experts such as Hallaj hold that the only way for true civil participation to develop is via active engagement with the government, which, he claims is now ready to bridge the void between the state and society.

“The ball is now in our field,” Hallaj said. “In the past there used to be gaps and lack of response or understanding, but now it is better. And there is a good dialogue between the state and the civil society organisations.”

Civil society activists working in unlicensed groups, including human rights organisations, Syria Today spoke to say a gap exists between their ambitions and the environment they operate in. Despite this, they say they will continue, adding that they feel organisations and associations are becoming more professional when it comes to their internal management and coordination with fellow NGOs.

As for Kadi, who is in the process of setting up a civil society watchdog which will monitor and document the activities of groups, only time will tell.

“We will review the experiences of the NGOs in Syria over the past five years and their achievements,” he said. “In the coming years, those who are not active enough will leave the sector.”