The Center for Arab-West Understanding had faced numerous obstacles from the moment the founders wanted to establish the organization in 2004, despite its lofty goal of facilitating understanding between communities in Egypt and the Arab World and the West, through producing material for Arab-West Report, and hosting interns from Egypt and around the world. The NGO wants to promote stability in Egypt through acceptance of different opinions and opposing polemics. Its guiding principles are: objectivity, non-partisanship, and promoting mutual understanding. Thus, one would expect Egyptian authorities would appreciate such an NGO but the experience of this NGO is different.

The problems of this and many other NGOs seems to be related to Egyptian security. The establishment of the Center for Arab-West Understanding was rejected in 2004 by Egyptian security without providing any reason. Lawyer Nājī Mattā brought the rejection into the Egyptian Council of State which ruled that there was no reason for the request for NGO status not to be accepted. Following this decision, the Ministry of Social Solidarity accepted the application in 2007.

The next hurdle was in the application of foreign funding. This needs the permission of the Ministry of Social Solidarity, but in reality, Egyptian security officers make the rulings over such requests. In 2009, the decision about a request for a peace building program was so delayed that a German funder withdrew, and in 2017 the Ministry of Social Solidarity flatly rejected project funding by the Anna Lindh Foundation.

Thus, I started investigating about the role of NGOs in Egypt. This wasn‟t easy. I asked tens of Egyptian NGOs to share their experiences with the Ministry of Social Solidarity with me but they refused to talk. I asked the Anna Lindh Foundation for an interview but despite numerous mails and phone calls they simply decided not to respond to my efforts to contact them, or to those of office manager ʿĀdil Rizq Allāh.

This text is thus primarily based on literature and the experiences of the Center for Arab-West Understanding.