The memorandum mentioned that, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution No. 3379 on November 10, 1975, deeming “Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination,” in a circumstance in which the struggle of the Palestinian Arab people for their right to self-determination received great respect, especially after the liberation of many of the peoples and countries of Asia and Africa from colonialism. This followed the issuance of Resolution No. (1514) of the United Nations General Assembly, ending colonialism in the year 1960. The issue of Palestine, recognized by international governmental and non-governmental circles, became an issue of national liberation for the people who suffered from occupation, but the United Nations, in a dangerous precedent, canceled this decision on December 16, 1991, contradicting the data it relied on when it made this historic decision.

The memo explained that, the reason for retreating from describing the nature of racist Zionism is due to the imbalance of power at the global level. The dissolution of the socialist bloc, the dominance of the United States in international relations, and its exclusiveness in international resolution, which left a double negative impact on the Palestinian Arab people, victims of racist discriminatory policies on the one hand. It negatively influenced the issue of international peace and security on the other hand, especially since there are legitimate doubts that accompanied the cancellation of Resolution (3379) on the part of all peace-loving forces that support the rights of peoples to self-determination, especially those that know the truth about racist Israeli practices in Palestine.

  This dangerous development in the international situation, at that time, and on the eve of the repeal of Resolution (3379), did not prevent the global human rights movement and supporters of peace and liberation from continuing their struggle to support the Palestinian Arab people. They offered all forms of solidarity and demonstrated the truth of racist, arrogant practices, with awareness that this unprecedented step, taken by the United Nations, took place in an ambiguous circumstance. The United Nations contradicted itself, at a time when the world was witnessing Israel’s racist approach, and the high pace of settlement operations, deportations, annexation of lands, and the systematic evacuation of the population to eliminate the Palestinian presence, in contravention of international legitimacy and its resolutions, including Security Council Resolutions (242) of 1967 and (338) of 1973. These resolutions explicitly declare “the necessity of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, as contemporary international law does not permit the annexation of territories by force”. In addition, the Security Council considered the Knesset’s decisions to annex Jerusalem and the Golan to be invalid. The International Court of Justice had previously decided in 2004 that the construction of the “segregation wall” (the apartheid wall) was invalid, and ordered its dismantling and compensation for those affected by its construction.

In Addition Memo noted that, Israel is still disavowing United Nations resolutions, especially Resolution (181) of 1947 and Right of Return Resolution (194) of 1948. In addition to a package of other resolutions condemning its racist practices and denial of the rights of the Palestinian Arab people. This is something that Israel and the forces behind it faced in the “Durban International Conference” (South Africa) regarding racism in 2001, in which about 3,000 international human rights and humanitarian organizations condemned Israel’s racist practices.

  Regarding to that, what prompts us to address this message to you is that Israel declares, day and night, that its political doctrine is Zionism, and that based on the doctrine it has been carrying out the aggression today against Gaza for 8 months. The brutality that the entire world witnessed and expressed sympathy for the humane victims, as more than 170,000 people are killed or wounded. In addition, vital facilities, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and places of worship were destroyed, and medical teams and relief teams were targeted, in addition to cutting off water, food, medicine, electricity, fuel, and the most basic components of human life.

 The Memo explained that, more than two million Palestinian people are exposed to an unprecedented human catastrophe in a brutal genocidal war. It uses the most heinous types of crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed. This violates the rules of international humanitarian law, especially the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their annexes the Geneva Protocols of 1977, the first on the protection of Victims of international armed conflicts; the second relates to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts.

  These new and old practices make Israel a rogue state and outside international law. Indeed, they stand blatantly in opposition to the United Nations Charter, which recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination, as well as respect for human rights, which is a topic that cannot be ignored. It relates to the core of Israel’s political doctrine, which puts it in the dock, as well as its political and military leaders, according to the decisions of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

The Memo showed, The world has begun to realize greatly, including some American and European Jews and many Western circles, especially students and youth movements , the danger of Zionism to the civilized world. In fact, the belief has begun to expand, according to the legal standard, that Zionism is a new form of racism and the apartheid system, which no longer exists as a political system in the world after the end of the apartheid South African regime, except in Israel. This is reflected in the rise in the score of the State of Palestine. (143) countries recently voted and recognized its right to be a full member of the United Nations, which led to an expansion of the scope of international recognition for it, as happened when Spain, Ireland, and Norway recognized it, as if it was a reaction to the practices of Zionist racism.

  The Memo noted that, We, as Arab intellectuals, jurists, and peace advocates, start from the humanitarian and human rights values ​​that we believe in, and are shared by intellectuals, jurists, and peace advocates from various parts of the world. I call on you, by virtue of your responsibilities, to review previous General Assembly resolutions, including reversing Resolution (3379), which considers Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination.

The genocidal war carried out by the Israeli authorities in cold blood and without any legal, moral, religious or humanitarian consideration confirms the necessity and even the legitimacy of such a humanitarian demand that confirms the reality of racist practices and the political doctrine that justifies them.

 According to that, Memo confirmed that,  We will work collectively and individually with organizations, forces, cultural groups, countries, governments, and everyone who believes that Zionism is a new face of racism embodied in the Israeli practices on which it has been based since 1948 until today. To achieve this goal we will seek to achieve more solidarity with the Palestinian Arab people, so that they have self-determination, establish an independent and viable national state with Al-Quds as its capital, the return of refugees, and compensate the injustice and damage suffered, and the devastation that befell the people for more than three-quarters of a century. This major international responsibility falls on the United Nations and all the influential powers.

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-The decision to approve the granting of special consultative status to the Egyptian federation will allow it to participate in the work of the council and other UN bodies, consult with member states, and submit written and oral statements to the council by appointing its representatives at UN headquarters and offices in New York, Geneva and Vienna.

-The application for admission of the Egyptian Union for development and social protection policies(EFDSPP) as a consulting body was approved after it met all the international conditions and standards for NGOs and after discussing its application by the committee on NGOs for its resumed session of 2023, which was held at the UN headquarters in New York on May 16, 2023, and the representatives of 19 member states did not object to the application.

-Dr. Salah Hashem, founder of the EFDSPP, expressed his happiness that the federation obtained the consultative status of the Economic and Social Council, which will enable it to participate effectively in the work of the United Nations Council and its subsidiary bodies, saying: “We look forward to working with members of the Economic and Social Council.” in the field of social protection and the protection of human rights.

-Hashem explained that granting the federation the consultative status is due to the association of the federation’s work programs with the UN goals and the culmination of the important role for it in the field of social protection in Egypt, protecting poor, marginalized and vulnerable families, solving their problems, and mobilizing the efforts of individuals, associations and private sectors to bring about development. Contribute to supporting the state’s efforts in meeting the humanitarian, social and economic needs of society.

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-He also indicated that the federation has formed a social protection network consisting of 64 civil associations representing the governorates of Egypt. It seeks to support the involvement of civil society organizations in local and regional networks and alliances that ensure upholding the value of civil, governmental and private sector efforts, and to qualify civil institutions to use the concepts of social protection in their development programs, based on the fact that social protection is considered a developmental idea and not just a phased project.

-At the level of individuals, the federation adopts programs to develop social, psychological and economic awareness, care for groups at risk, empower citizens with their basic social and economic rights, and participate in formulating policies that reflect the real reality.

-At the youth level, the federation seeks to build a generation capable of entrepreneurship and community leadership in the future through the largest network of volunteer youth in Egyptian universities and local communities, as the number of volunteers exceeded 30,000 from all governorates of the Republic.

-The federation works in the following areas: education, health, economic development of the family, income development through micro-lending projects, improving the standard of living of the poor (children, the disabled, women, the elderly), and infrastructure services (sanitation, clean food, drinking water pure), caring for families at risk and improving their living conditions, providing psychological, social and economic support to the families of released prisoners, protecting and preserving the environment, in addition to his interest in the field of human rights, and conducting studies and research by the Strategic Forum for Public Policies and Development Studies “Draya”, the research arm of the federation(https://draya-eg.org/?from=AppAgg.com) .

-The Economic and Social Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations, and the main platform for promoting debate and coordination for economic and social development. The granting of consultative status to non-governmental organizations comes on the recommendation of the United Nations Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, as it is granted after ensuring that its programs are linked to the objectives of the United Nations.

-The decision of the ECOSOC Council, in its session yesterday, Tuesday, included granting 167 non-governmental organizations applying for consultative status from all over the world, postponing the decision on 294 applications in order to continue consideration during its regular session in 2024, and closing the door for consideration of 30 applications without appeal in her eligibility.

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Then they changed its connotation from a scientific term that can be described and used in developing social policies, primarily aimed at reducing poverty, into “easy money”, for which they presented tens of books and hundreds of researches and studies. However, all they came up with was just replacing the term “social welfare” with the term “social protection”, a matter that made all their writings and studies completely separate from reality and unrelated to the factual development presented in the writings of the world newly emerged social protection policies, although both types of writings only share the same “Title”.

Anyone who wrote one line or made a simple study in which the term social protection was addressed was mistakenly considered an expert or consultant in social protection, a misconception that made these writings no more than wasted efforts and merely some artifacts locked up in the drawers of academics and shelved within the research institutions’ libraries.

As for the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity, it has had a different view of the concept of social protection, especially since 1939, the year that witnessed the establishment of the Egyptian Ministry of Social Affairs.  The Ministry of Social Solidarity used the term “social welfare” besides the term “social security”, and when the term “social protection” began to appear on the horizon of the funding international institutions after 2011, the Ministry of Social Solidarity began to adopt that term, and the Egyptian state began to use the phrase “social protection networks”. What the Ministry did was limiting the concept of social protection to “the programs that provide temporary financial assistance to families with low incomes”, while linking the concept of social welfare to institutions, and making the concept of social security limited to the monthly pension based on its subscribing members. Despite these differences between academics and researchers on the one hand, and the Ministry of Social Solidarity and its institutions on the other hand, international institutions have adopted a concept that was completely different from either what we adopted or what we disagreed over. The United Nations, for instance, defined social protection as completely synonymous with social security, and considered that if social security itself is deemed a human right, according to what is stated in the international human rights document and in line with the synonymy of the two terms in the United Nations doctrine, social protection was considered one of the Human rights by default. The ministry added to the writings on social work a new term, which is “social protection grounds” which was meant by all legislations to aim at reducing poverty and ensure not falling into it. It is a term that has not yet been circulated in our research books in Egypt or even the Arab world. The concept did not receive significant attention from policy makers in the governments of third world countries.

As for the International Labor Organization, which is one of the first international institutions that have used the concept of social protection, it has limited the use of the term social protection to securing the status of social workers, especially those working in vulnerable jobs and professions.

Perhaps this introduction is necessary to enter into what I would like to present in this article, As I view it, social protection is a more general and comprehensive concept than all the other terms, and greater than these variations and differences. It is a caste term with a broad meaning and a narrow meaning. Breadth and narrowness are related with the resources available to achieve social protection goals. When the broad meaning of social protection lies in reducing poverty and preventing more citizens from entering the world of abject poverty, social protection becomes a corresponding rather than equivalent concept to the one of social welfare. If social welfare aims to reduce the number of poor people, though I assume that in reality it aims at keeping the poor in a position of poverty without tangible improvement in their livelihood and without change, then social protection aims to stabilize the poverty rate at 20% of the population, and work to increase the proportion of the rich, then increase the proportion of the middle class in the social pyramid. An increase in the numbers of the rich and middle-class will inevitably lead to a decline in the number of poor people. As international experiences have proven, countries’ policies which have worked only to reduce poverty by devoting attention to the poor and providing aid to those below the poverty line leaving out the middle-class citizens proved their failure. Perhaps the Egyptian experience is a realistic model of these policies.

Usually, governments in developed countries follow protective policies that include the broad meaning of social protection, which means providing full support to all strata of society so that poverty does not extend and affect the vast majority of the population, and then adopt their policies in light of and based on this concept in order to develop programs to confront poverty. Confrontation in this context does not mean reducing poverty as much as it means increasing the rate of wealth. Most of the developed countries’ assistance is conditional on education, health care and participation in production. Ultimately, the aim is to elevate those with limited income to a stage where they can become self-reliant. The decrease in the rate of financial support allocations year after year becomes an important indicator of the success of social protection policies and recovery of the poor.

As for the governments in poor countries, they usually tend to adopt the narrow, or even very narrow, concept of social protection, which can be confined to the traditional concept of social welfare, targeting within all of their programs the weak citizens with denied rights. Activities of such governments do not exceed simple aids that do not satisfy more than 30% of the needs of the poor, in addition to some activities related to the feeble portion of human fabric, such as women, children, the disabled and the elderly, which are usually educational activities. In general, it appears that the difference over the concept between academics, field researchers, and decision-makers has caused, to a large extent, the lack of clearly defined social protection policies. This, in turn, has caused a lack of integration among social protection programs that are practiced within various sectors and perhaps within the same service sector, which is considered a real waste of countries’ efforts and resources. Perhaps this is what calls us to demand that governments in poor societies adopt a clearer concept of social protection that stands comparison with the globally agreed-upon concept. Accordingly, social protection policies are developed and all state institutions are obligated to implement, through complementary programs that target different society classes, each according to their need and their capacity.

Social Policies and the Acrobat Citizen Theory

On the general level, to be able to develop serious social protection policies that ensure a real confrontation against increasing poverty rates, especially in developing countries, we should look at the citizen inside our society as an “Acrobat” performing in a circus, who has to move from one rope onto another without falling, in a way that leaves him constantly vulnerable to falling or occasionally to death. For a citizen to be able to live safely, he must go all the way to achieve his goals under oppressive conditions that always threaten him with impoverishment or falling into the abyss of poverty. These conditions are typically due to protective policies that are absent, incomplete, or unfair. The poor members of society try to manipulate their compulsive circumstances in various ways, in the same way the acrobat jumps from one rope onto the other, risking his or her own life.

If every time the “acrobat” participates in the “show” he or she falls to the ground, it only means that the acrobat has not gotten enough training, preparation, or assistance, not to mention the lack of a circus procedure to ensure that the acrobat is instructed and protected from falling. Moreover, if every time the acrobat falls he or she bleeds to death, this means that the circus does not have a course of action concerning how to rescue the acrobat in the event of falling. In many cases, the acrobat dies because of both factors, and by analogy with poverty, governments are responsible for setting policies and laws to protect their citizens from the trap of poverty in the event of their fall and loss of income. Since poverty rates in developing countries, including Egypt, are increasing, it has become necessary for governments to adopt “sustainable policies” for social protection that deal with poverty, not as an emergent problem, but rather, as a constant, prolonged, and historical crisis. That can be obtained by adopting programs and policies that save the citizen from falling victim to the different and multiple burdens of poverty. However, in a scenario where the number of times the acrobat fails are few or rare, i.e. if the count of citizens who belong to the poor class is small or limited, their government may opt for protective “emergency” policies that are fairly focused on saving the victims and helping them to survive.

The Developmental Profits of the Economic Reform Program:

Three years have passed since the Egyptian government implemented its brave economic profit program, with direct support from the International Monetary Fund, which loaned the Egyptian government $ 12 billion in stages linked to the rates of development and achievement pursuant to the targeted economic reform program. The government started the first steps of economic reform with a daring decision by the Central Bank, which approved letting the Egyptian pound to float against US dollar to determine its currency’s actual value. Accordingly, the government took strict measures to control the black market and prevent financial transactions outside the banks. This was followed by a package of financial reforms, after which Egypt approved broad social protection policies, aimed in its entirety to preserve the middle class, and protect the poor and low-income groups from falling into the clutches of hunger, disease, and crime.

Indeed, Egypt did not limit itself to adopting an ambitious program for economic reform, but rather adopted an integrated plan for reform, the most prominent axis of which was the promotion of economy, along with other parallel reform axes. There has been a financial reform program, a second one for educational reform, a third for directed social protection policies, a fourth for policy reforms related to public culture, a fifth for the inclusion of young people in the political process, and a sixth for career reform and workforce support, not to mention the policies related to industrialization, food security, tourism enhancement, and foreign relations, as well as healthcare and anti-corruption reforms. Let alone the policies of building and strengthening the Egyptian armed forces. Now the question is: Has Egypt been able to gain success in all these fields. One can be securely convinced when they know that the Egyptian state has ranked first in the world in terms of the achievement rate over that particular period of time, no one can ignore such size of success attained by the Egyptian government with regard to all those files.

The questions that have come up while we are on the threshold of a new year are: Has Egypt been able to establish a solid base for heading toward development in a way that makes it stand the storms that threaten the global economy? Have all the successes Egypt achieved at the level of infrastructure programs, the economy, and investment contributed to improving the life quality of the Egyptian population in general and the average citizen in particular? To what degree have the Egyptian policies participated in the restoration of Egyptian expatriate intellectuals and to what extent was Egypt able to benefit from them? To which degree have these programs been able to reduce illegal immigration rates? And lastly, have these policies been able to make progress in the ranking of Egypt according to the index of transparency, human development, and among the most vulnerable countries?

The answers to those questions require no political bias that is likely to take us away from objectivity, as much as we need an in-depth reading of the international reports concerned with the interpretation and analysis of these files. By reading here I mean here overall comprehension, in other words, placement of the Egyptian situation in light of similar regional and international situations, as well as scientific and accurate indicators from well-renowned institutions concerned with reading, analysis, and assessment.

This article may not be able to answer all these questions, noting there are still files in need for more time to be evaluated; however, I am going to offer some so-far evident answers to name a few. The basic education development file is still passing through an uncertain phase as for the level of progress achieved, since no single educational plan is capable of paying fruit in less than 12 years, the period students take to complete their pre-university education. Furthermore, we may also need to wait for a final evaluation, until the students have finished university studies, so that we can have a scale for measuring the ability of education to respond to the job market, as well as measuring the level of demand for Egyptian workforce locally, regionally, and internationally.

Another instance to be cited is about the Egyptian latest experience in economic reform, which has produced positive results that have been reflected through a remarkable improvement in economic performance indicators during 2019, the year that witnessed the beginning of the “harvest” phase of the economic reform program, which now has unmatched international acclaim. Taking the aggregate tourism revenues of the same year into account, we see they have amounted to 12.5 billion dollars, compared to 9.8 billion dollars during the last fiscal year 2017/2018, with a growth rate exceeding 28.2%, and reflecting the recovery of tourism activities, as well as interpreting the efforts made by the state to promote tourism in its comprehensive concept, as one of the pillars of national economy.

Also, during the previous three years, the productivity of the energy sector increased by 50% to meet domestic demand, as many national projects were established, including the administrative capital, the industrial area of Suez and Port Said, new railways and subways, the construction of the Benban Solar Energy Park, in addition to several greenhouses, which all contributed to creating many job opportunities and a marked improvement in the services provided to citizens.

The Egyptian government has also succeeded, through the electronic implementation of the state’s general budget, in reaching financial and economic targets for the first time in more than 15 years. By achieving an initial surplus of 2% of GDP, the deficit rate, achieving 8.4%, was even better than required.

Regarding the results of the strategic plan for the development of the Suez Canal, the results of the evaluation were promising.  The channel’s revenues during the fiscal year 2018/2019 peaked to the highest annual return in the history of the channel, with total revenues of $ 5.9 billion, with an increase of $ 300 million over the previous fiscal year, equal to a growth rate of 5,4 %.

Since the main three sources of obtaining hard currency for Egypt are tourism, the Suez Canal, and remittances from Egyptians abroad, and according to the data of the Central Bank of Egypt, the total remittances of Egyptians working abroad amounted to about $ 6.7 billion, compared to $ 5.9 billion during the previous fiscal year 2018/2019 with a growth rate of more than 13.6%. Perhaps this growth in the three sectors also had fruitful results in terms of both the economic growth rate in general, which exceeded 5.6% as the highest rate achieved by Egypt since 2010, and the decrease in the unemployment rate down to 7.5% after it had reached 13% in 2014. In addition, the overall growth led to a rise in Egypt’s share of the cash reserves to exceed $ 45 billion, compared to $ 15 billion in 2013, with a significant decline in inflation rates to reach 6.5%. This has been clearly reflected in the massive decline in budget deficit so as to unprecedentedly come down to 8.2%, enabling the government to achieve the aforementioned initial surplus of 2%. It is worth mentioning that these figures in their entirety have led Egypt to rank fifth among the Arab countries in terms of the size of monetary reserves following Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Algeria and Qatar; and ahead of Kuwait, Morocco and Tunisia.

Despite all these successes that Egypt has achieved in the field of economic reform, we noticed two serious concerns. The first of which is that the rate of industrial growth is still quite weak, for it has not exceeded 5% in the budget of 2017/2018, given that it had reached 9% by the end of the sixties of the last century, and that the highest ambition of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development is to reach an industrial growth rate of 11% in the fiscal year 2021-2022.

The second issue is related to the size of the Egyptian economy, which has not increased since 2010, as the size of the Egyptian economy is now equal to 250 billion dollars, the same size that Egypt had in 2010, i.e. 9 years ago. This size is very weak if we compare it to a country like Turkey, whose economy has exceeded 800 billion dollars, or South Korea, whose economy has reached 1.5 trillion dollars, a matter which puts us in bad need to review the policies on industry in Egypt.

All these achievements in the various sectors of the country have had repercussions on social protection programs directed to the poor, where the government adopted, at the onset of economic reform, an effective social protection program, which is the “Solidarity and Dignity Program”. The program is dedicated for conditional and unconditional cash support for low-income groups. A number of 2.7 million families or about 9 million Egyptian citizens benefited from that program, which also required beneficiary families to continue educating their children on one hand, and mothers visiting family planning clinics on the other hand. It also provided unconditional cash support to all handicapped and elderly people over the age of 65. The Ministry of Social Solidarity in Egypt launched a “Two-children-are-enough“ program, in order to support the state’s policies in curbing overpopulation, as well as the “Chance”  program to improve the income level of poor families by financing micro-projects. The Ministry also launched a “Decent Housing” program to improve infrastructure services for poor families, which, so far, nearly 350,000 families have benefited from. This is in addition to the Ministry launching a law that protects people with disabilities and guarantees them all rights to education, health care, and job opportunities. Not only that, but the Ministry also launched an “Intimacy” program aiming at reducing divorce rates, as well as another program working to rescue street children.

The bottom line is that social protection as a concept is greater than the economy itself, and it is more difficult to place entirely on the shoulders of governments, and also too broad to be limited to financial aspects. Social protection cannot be achieved unless governments adopt a holistic vision of economic reform and commit themselves to embodying that vision in partnership with the civil society and the private sector.

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