Interviews with Samar El Hussieny

I think the civil society is a core institution or the core entity in the society that can make the government accountable, because we don’t have a political interest. We are there, we are just fighting for democracy, equality – these values in the society. So we will see what the government is doing and we will evaluate it according to the international standards about a democracy, the freedom, the dignity, the equality, justice.

And we will just giving our feedback and you will have – we would like if the government can interact and ask more about what we can do or just – or maybe adopt some of the recommendations and – or some of the plans that we usually submit to them. But in most of the Arab countries, and I would say that in Egypt also, they are not adopting any of these plans. And they usually ignore these reports. Maybe this is kind of – they’re not trusting us that much.

They will not like that anyone will go and say you are not going well, this action is not well – this is not the right action and the right time. Usually the country is doing that, or usually the countries are having this way. They will not accept it. But this is kind of the struggle. Even in the most democratic country, the government usually will not like all the reporters or the feedback that it takes from the civil society.

But what the debate is about how they are reflect to that. Are they going just to ignore or are they going to ignore and attack these people? And this is actually maybe what’s happening now in Egypt, concern, as I raised, for the NGOs offices, because they thought that if we just let them continue their works, this is maybe making some troubles for us. So we are going to attack them and close their offices.

And after this – when this happened, actually, I was studying with some of the human rights activists, and we said what will happen if they close the offices? And I told them: Let it. We are going to go and work from the streets. We have the streets and usually we don’t use our offices to work. People are in the streets and we are mainly interacting with them. And we don’t need offices anyway.

Samar El Hussieny grew up in a politically oriented family in Egypt. Her father was a socialist opposition politician. She studied political science and has worked in the human rights field since 2005. She participated in several student awareness activities for youth during her college years and has been active in various civil society projects concerning human rights education, election monitoring and minority rights. She is a Program Officer at the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies and is pursuing a master’s degree in political science.

Samar has been an activist in the Egyptian Revolution that began on January 25, 2011. She continues to work to promote freedom and support democracy during her country’s transitional period. Samar has also been intensively engaged on initiatives related to elections in Egypt. In addition to monitoring elections and the political process, she is involved in projects relating to minority rights, social media, and transitional justice in Egypt. Samar seeks to support reform movements and non-violent revolutions in the Arab World and beyond.

Samar was among the inaugural group of the George W. Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative Fellowship Program in 2012, a leadership program designed to empower and equip women to catalyze change.

Samar hopes to be elected to national office and is planning to run for President of Egypt one day.