Interviews with Samar El Hussieny

Actually I started with my first year in my – in my college. I was a student in economics and political science college. And in my first year I met one of the civil society activist, and he was one of my board in one of the activities inside the university. And we started – in this year it was 2005 and we have a big kind of political reform in Egypt. There were a new presidential elections, and there were new amendment for the constitution. And we have a lot of discussions about what’s happening, how we are going to tackle it, how to go and participate in the society.

So I started talking with him, and this was my first beginning to work in the human rights field. I started to work in the – in this organization that I have been working to – since 2005 till now. And I started with the media monitoring for the presidential elections. And after that, I completed with human rights education and working on raising awareness for youth, especially in my age, with democracy and election issues and also issues concern freedom, dignity and the universalism of freedom and the universalism of human rights.

Actually we are a special kind of NGOs, which is not directly connected to the ministry of the social solidarity. We are registered as a civil company, and this is because we didn’t want to be – to have this kind of restriction, to have kind of pressure from the government or that anyone can affect our observation or our work in the human rights and the civil society field.

So when we started, we worked on the media monitoring, we worked within the human rights education. And we – sometimes we got some kind of – I will not say restrictions, but I will say kind of annoyments. And they were trying to ask several times about what are you doing and why you are doing that. And we were very transparent. And even one of the – in one of the days in one of the trainings, one of the people that I was trained, he asked me: Why you are doing that? I said to him: Because we want to get the regime down. And it was a really small statement, and I didn’t mean it in this time, but now we got the regime down.

The main focus for our organization is the youth especially the age from 17 till 35. Working with this specific target group because our society and our population is this kind of population, which you can call a youth population. We are a youth society, because the majority of our population are from youth. So if you are going to lead the country to any place, if you want to make a change, you have to work with youth. And I do believe that the – you as youth, we as youth in this – in this country, we have the power of changes. And we are believing in our ideas. We are believing in our country and our history. So we have this kind of dignity. We can go and do it. We can do anything. And we are not believe in any obstacles or barriers. I don’t think so.

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.