Get the wheels rolling

The Egyptian Declaration of Citizenship Rights (EDCR) which was issued by the General Citizenship Conference held under the auspices of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) on 25th November laid the foundation of a straightforward policy for correcting the flaws in citizenship measures in Egypt. The EDCR covered various areas including discrimination in employment, the religion box in formal papers, torture by police, problems relating to building places of worship, aspirations of Egyptian expatriates and the law governing NGOs in Egypt.
Well did the NCHR do when it included in the EDCR a clause urging Parliament to issue the legislation required to enhance citizenship rights and to declare 2008 the ‘year of citizenship’. This should drive the various institutions concerned to join forces to turn principles of citizenship into facts on the ground.
The first promising outcome was the NCHR’s release of an amended draft of its proposal for a unified law of places of worship. The first draft had come under fire since it stipulated security approval as a pre-requirement for building or restoring places of worship. Not only should the amendment be hailed since it omitted the said stipulation, but I believe it now stands on equal footing with the two previous draft laws proposed on the issue and submitted to Parliament. The first is Mohammed Guweili’s proposal and the second is Ibtissam Habib’s; both were approved by the People’s Assembly (PA) Proposals and Complaints Committee and are due for presentation to the PA for discussion and approval.
The NCHR’s amended draft law stipulates the following:
Article 1: Works of building, restoration, renovation, or expansion of places of worship should be licensed by the administrative bodies concerned.
Article 2: It is prohibited to license the use of part of an existing building as a place for worship, or to change the purpose of an existing building or part of it to be used for worship.
Article 3: The religious body applying for building the place of worship should fill the required form and attach proof of land ownership and a receipt proving that the fees, which should not exceed LE2000 were paid. Documents stipulated by the executive regulation should also be attached to the application.
Article 4: The administrative body concerned should hand the applicant a copy of the application submitted, citing the date of filing the application. Applications should be registered in a specific file. In cases of building, renovating or expanding, investigation and licensing should be done in a maximum of four months from the date of submitting the application. In cases of restoring or fortifying an existing building, the process should take no more than two months.
Article 5: Governors are responsible for issuing the license. If the time limit stipulated in article 4 expires without the concerned administrative body issuing a justified rejection, the application is deemed automatically approved. In case an application is rejected, reasons for the rejection should be cited.
Article 6: The Administrative Court is exclusively in charge of handling appeals protesting decisions issued by administrative bodies. Rulings should be issued swiftly.
Article 7: A new department should be established in the Supreme Administrative Court to handle appeals of rulings concerning places of worship.
I hope the above proposal finds its way into Parliament. But since the devil is usually in the details, I believe that two points should be stressed. First, the law should legitimise already-existing places of worship which are recognised by official survey maps or local and security bodies. Many of the present places of worship were established centuries ago and thus possess no formal papers, while others were built without formal approvals because of the near-impossibility of obtaining such approvals. Second, I suggest that the law should confine the role of security apparatuses to safeguarding the works approved by the administrative bodies. It ought to be stated that security apparatuses should place no obstacles under whatever pretexts to prevent or delay works for places of worship.

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