Sherine El Taraboulsi - "It Is Very Diverse"

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Sherine El Taraboulsi - "It Is Very Diverse"

Researcher discusses philanthropic landscape within Arab region

Ms El Taraboulsi speaking to participants during a workshop session

An international development Ph.D candidate at the University of Oxford has suggested countries within the Arab region are facing their own individual philanthropic challenges.

Sherine El Taraboulsi, a Weidenfeld scholar at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, recently attended a Salzburg Global session co-organized with the Arab Human Rights Fund: 'Getting Transition Right: A Rights-based Approach towards Diversity & Inclusivity’.

The session focused on four key countries in the midst of transition in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Ms El Taraboulsi has 10 years of experience in research and analysis of philanthropic practices and citizen engagement in the Arab region.

She served as project manager for the USAID-funded Regional Partnership on Culture and Development Program, which produced applied research on development in seven Arab countries.

Prior to this, she launched a research programme at the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where she led a number of regional research projects as well as the Takaful Annual Conference on Arab Philanthropy and Civic Engagement.

Her recent research has focused on Yemen, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt with the focus on the influence of socio-political transitions on resource mobilization, philanthropic landscape, formal and informal types of citizen mobilisation, and youth civic engagement.

In an extended Q&A with Salzburg Global, Ms El Taraboulsi reviews the philanthropic landscape that exists in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. She also discusses a number of challenges these countries face.

In terms of the philanthropic landscape that exists within the Arab region, could you elaborate as to what it is?

There is a need to recognise that the philanthropic landscape within the Arab region is somewhat diverse. There are similarities in terms of the challenges that face the landscape, but it is very diverse.

Generalizations are helpful but reductive. More often than not in international gatherings and in meetings they tend to look at it as one unit of analysis.

The truth of the matter is, however, that when I look back over the past 10 years and I reflect on the emergence of the sector, strategic philanthropy, that is, within the region, I realize that each country I focused on had its own particular experience, its share of challenges as well as opportunities.

Your research focused on Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. To begin with, could you please tell us how a philanthropic sector emerged in Tunisia?

Tunisia does not have a term called ‘foundation’ within its regulatory framework, that which governs civil society organizations. You do have organizations that refer to themselves as a ‘fondation’ nevertheless but as far as laws go, most references address associations and societies.

Nevertheless, you do get a number of foundations or institutions that function as both foundations as well as implementers, with a wide range of activities at the grassroots level.

It is very interesting to look at how the conceptual confusion we have regarding the sector and how those concepts manifest themselves on the ground. We think we’re using the same language and that it means the same thing to all of us but we really aren’t.

There are no clear lines of demarcation separating one thing from the other; a foundation for example from an organization and so for the most part, we operate within very flexible hybrids.

Back to the Tunisian context; Tunisia went from - what I call – ‘propaganda philanthropy’ in the period under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the family of his wife, Leïla Trabelsi - who controlled and monopolized a lot of the wealth in that country - to a period where there was an extensive focus on humanitarian aid. [This] was during the launch of the revolution in 2011.

Then, right now, [you have] a period of reflection; the initial spike has somewhat receded and now organizations face the challenge of sustainability.

If they want to continue to exist, they need to figure out a plan for themselves, start thinking long term while meeting short term needs that continue to emerge with the continuous mobilization in the country.

What effect has the revolution had on the philanthropic sector in Tunisia?

The revolution is still ongoing. They are still going through a number of sociopolitical changes, most importantly of course the constitutional process, the drafting and finishing of the constitution, and as those changes take place the philanthropic landscape shifts very rapidly.

Think of philanthropy as both the mirror and the locale within which the dynamics of political power reveal themselves.

An analysis of power relations is definitely inherent to our understanding of resource mobilization in transition.

One of the changes in Tunisia is that you witnessed a shift in focus. Under Ben Ali, while there were human rights organizations and others that focused on development; the majority focused on cultural activities, more than 60% in fact.

It was a way to keep on the safe side and to avoid confrontations with Ben Ali’s regime.

Most of the resources that were mobilized focused on cultural activities, exchanges between different countries, European countries and Tunisia, women’s rights – not that women’s rights aren’t important, but again it depends on how you approach the question – and it was self-congratulatory: a self-congratulatory type of philanthropy. You get that in Libya too with the Gaddafi Foundation.

Then, during the revolution, because of the focus on humanitarian aid, people started leveraging resources and you witnessed citizens – not necessarily the big money, the mega philanthropists, [and] those big billionaires coming through. And this is important.

You actually witnessed the citizens coming together and starting to form alliances amongst themselves in order to meet needs taking place on the ground.

The mega philanthropists, often center-staged, were, in fact, marginal in comparison. In the period that immediately followed the ousting of Ben Ali, you got the emergence of a large number of organizations that would function as foundations, providing funding, or collecting funds, or implementing projects on the ground.

At that point in time, the numbers vary of course, but one of the interesting figures and which is quite telling, is that in the period from January to September 2011, you had around 1,044 organizations emerge.

This in itself, even though I’m very skeptical about numbers, is very significant about that effervescence within the sector and it also demonstrates the will of the people, that grassroots, “bottom-up” agency to turn things around.

From 2012 to 2013, an expected shift takes place. Some of those newly formed organizations started disappearing from the public realm.

This is expected because they had emerged to meet an immediate need but they could not develop the necessary structures for sustainability.

Another shift is a shift in focus. Organizations started realizing that if they wanted to bring impact, they will have to move outside the center and start targeting marginalized areas.

The revolution was a very sobering experience for them; the wave of change came from beyond the center, Mohammed Bouazizi’s Sidi Bouzid had been marginalized under Ben Ali but it was where the Revolution started.

So, funders and philanthropists started realizing that if they really wanted to turn things around, they needed to focus on areas outside of the center.

You get a focus on development and a geographic shift in that regard.

How would you compare Libya against Tunisia with regards to developments in its philanthropic sector?

Libya has a somewhat similar experience in terms of moving from propaganda philanthropy with the Gaddafi Foundation to humanitarian aid and then to more strategic types of philanthropy, still in the making though.

Propaganda in Libya was notorious, it was in your face; as atrocities were taking place in Libya, the bou Selim prison for example, you had a foundation preaching human rights to the world.

This came hand in hand with the rise of Saif al Islam Gaddafi. As for the funds, most accounts point towards the fact that the funding came from the Libyan people. It was from the wealth of the country itself, which was in need.

This is an example of 'propaganda philanthropy': when philanthropy is not there to meet a need – the needs of the people – but is there to serve a political purpose to project an exterior that is very different from what’s happening on the ground.

How was the philanthropic sector affected during the revolution?

During the revolution, you got a moment of humanitarian aid. But in Libya something else also happened. Reasons for this are that before the revolution, you did not have a civil society.

Tunis had some of civil society, even if it had a cultural focus. Libya had no experience whatsoever.

What happened was that with the focus on humanitarian aid it led to the emergence of a huge number of organizations from both the East and the West.

They started forming coalitions and the reasons for this are that they started asking questions about impact, about sustainability and about reaching beneficiaries. How could they reach beneficiaries in the best way possible?

Interviews I conducted in Libya left me quite impressed; they asked the right questions without having been through the experience of a civil society as in Egypt and Tunisia.

Coalitions started forming coalitions amongst themselves and the flux is still on going.

What are some of the challenges facing philanthropic practices in Libya right now?

One of the challenges that are facing philanthropy and philanthropic practices in Libya right now is regionalism. Libya is an extremely divided country – both historically and geographically.

It is divided by history. It is divided by tribalism. It is divided really by the wounds that have been accumulated from the beginning of the Italian occupation and even before that all the way until the present.

One of the shocking figures is that with the end of the Italian occupation, there were only seven university graduates in this country: seven university graduates.

They had to bear the burden of rebuilding a country from nothing. The Italians left Libya with roads and buildings, but they didn’t leave anything behind: no education [and] no capacity to build the country and put it on the map.

This is just one example of how difficult it is and how historically divided Libya has been.

Regionalism is a problem that persists to this very day. You get coalitions forming in the East that are not necessarily communicating with coalitions forming in the West.

There have been attempts by a number of international and local organizations to bring them to talk together.

I remember I was in Tripoli at the end of 2012, and we organized a meeting through the British Council, where we brought together civil society activists and philanthropists from all over the country – from East, West and South.

I was amazed at some of the comments the Libyans made about how it was the first time for them to meet one another.

The other thing that you need to take into consideration is also the media. The US for example is a country that is a continent: it’s very big. People from New York do not necessarily meet people from California, or what have you, but there is a set of institutions that guarantee linkages.

There’s a common history; there’s a common memory. There are structures that provide that. Libya didn’t have any of this.

The only thing that seemed to pull them together in the eye of the world outside was – ironically - Gadaffi, the very thing that divided them.

What did you discover about Egypt’s relationship with the philanthropic sector during your research?

It has a very different history of philanthropy. Civil society is very old in Egypt. It’s very big. It’s dysfunctional in so many different ways, just because of the sheer size of it.

You have huge numbers of organizations; very few of them are impactful, sustainable and really focus on the ground making change at a grassroots level.

What happened in Egypt in general is that philanthropy rose at the point in 2011 during the revolution and you had citizen philanthropy coming through, leveraging huge resources.

One foundation, I recall, managed to leverage 100,000 Egyptian pounds in just one day for Tahrir Square. Nevertheless, the big philanthropists froze, and as is the case in Tunisia, citizens came through, and in very creative ways, both on and off line.

In the period following the Revolution, a lot of wealth left the country. A lot of wealth in Egypt froze because it wanted to see where the tide would turn – and the tide is still in flux. We’ve had three regime changes so far and we’re still going forward.

Resource mobilization at those critical moments in history requires a degree of bravery from philanthropists that’s not always there, and a degree of knowledge that’s not always there.

Nevertheless, you’ve still got some bright examples. There’s the Mansour Foundation, for example, where members of staff within the foundation itself volunteered to have their salaries cut in order to make sure that the money kept flowing and reached the beneficiaries. They were not asked to do so, they did it out of sheer dedication.

What’s your biggest takeaway from the session?

I have a number of takeaways from this session. One is the need for intellectual bravery; the need to ask hard questions and be willing to get out of your mental comfort zone; this is the only way change happens, and change starts in the head.

The Salzburg Global Seminar provided a much-needed global and regional lens on things. It also brought together the academics with the practitioners, and that is very unique, because we rarely speak to one another.

My research scope had been regional – now focused on Libya and Italy – but I’ve had the chance to discuss some of my ideas with a very diverse and intelligent audience.

We’re all leaving, not only with new networks, but also with ideas for things that we want to take forward, for op-eds that we’re going to co-author together. And most importantly, we want to develop those ideas into action.

[We have] a new understanding of diversity and inclusion as concepts [and] whatever challenges they face within the region.

Ultimately, I think the most important thing is that it places the region in a global context. There is a lot of talk about the Arab Spring and I think this is becoming very narrow, and it’s becoming very incestuous in that regard.

It really is a global spring and the Arab world needs to start approaching itself. It needs to be approached as well as part of a global context.

This is what the seminar partly achieved or put us on a path towards.