Election and voting in Egypt and Denmark

In this post, Group 1 is going to take a look at the elections and voting turnout in both Egypt and Denmark. Needless to say, the issues are very different. Let's take a closer look!

In Egypt, the voter turnout is low according to statistics (27% in the last presidential elections, 2005). There are different reasons for this. One main reason could be the general sense of Egyptians that voting is useless and wouldn’t change anything. This is because of vote-rigging, corruption, and the lack of government support to educate people on culture of voting and political participation. Other factors should also be considered, such as the socioeconomic conditions of Egyptians.

Additionally, it seems to be that Egyptian women are more excluded from the political expression because of culture and traditions in some regions of Egypt. According to a recent survey, Egyptian youth are politically disengaged with only 2-3% involved in political activities.

Suggested solutions are political participation awareness raising activities. This could be accomplished through NGOs, students’ unions and workers syndicates to restore the activism spirit among Egyptians. Education reform is also important to cultivate the culture of active citizenship early on.

There is room for improvement, but progress is too slow. More work on grassroots level is necessary. Moreover, the process would take time till the Egyptian voter regain their trust and get over their fear of participation.


Meanwhile, in Denmark, a completely different debate is going on…

The voter turnout is 85-90% in the national elections. The debate lies in youth participation in the political process. The main question posed here is: at what age should the Danish youth be allowed to vote?

In Denmark, a lot of surveys have shown that youth at age 16-17 show great interest in voting and political participation. But they’re not allowed to vote until they turn 18. Why then, shouldn’t they be allowed to vote?

On the other side of the debate, 18 is also the age of maturity in Denmark, and it should remain that way. A lot of 16 year olds are not necessarily mature enough to embrace full responsibility for their own lives. And democratic participation must mean full participation, not only the right to cast your vote and be elected. It would be rather absurd to have a Member of Parliament - or even a minister - who would need his parents’ signature to enact new legislation.

The solution is ritualizing democracy. When you graduate in Denmark, you get a nice cap, a ceremony and a party. Why not make a ritual for first-time voters and celebrating this process? This would encourage youth and it would probably make them reflect more on their votes and illustrate that voting rights shouldn't be taken for granted.

What would you do if your friend converted his/her religion?

Group four:
Second Post (16th April 2010)

Freedom of religion is a right that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any religion.
Freedom of religion is considered a fundamental right in some nations and was mentioned in the universal declaration of human rights in article 18:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
In some countries, the citizens face a difficulty in changing their religion or even in practicing their religion, due to public pressure exerted by adherents of the majority religion. This has occurred through both official action such as arrests and imprisonment and unofficial action such as failing to prevent or punish private acts of violence targeting voluntary religious converts. The universal right to choose one’s religious affiliation creates an obligation for all governments to investigate and punish non-governmental acts of violence or discrimination that interfere with the freedom to choose one’s religion.

When we first posed such a question, the direct quick answer that will jump to our minds would be “why should I even care?".
But that's not true; we care and pay much attention to such controversial issues.
Every one of us keeps saying all the time that he believes in the freedom of thinking and the freedom of believing in specific religion, but when it comes to practical experiments it seems that those beliefs are fake and not true.
We asked that difficult question to some of our friends and the answers were not all the same.

Here are the opinions of some of our friends regarding this issue when they were asked about their reaction if their friend converted his/her religion:

Most people were much interested on the topic and believed that the freedom of religion is a personal and depended on individual beliefs. They said they would talk it over with their friend about his/her new beliefs and most importantly about WHY he/she took such a major change. (60%)

Second group were people who stood on the border line not knowing what to say. They said it depended whether this person changed in character or behavior or not. They were shocked from the idea and tried to digest first before taking any decisions. (20%)

Third group were people who stood on firm conclusion and were not willing to negotiate. They simply refused the whole matter. If a person converts then this means that he/she would change in nature and that can’t be a friend any more. (15%)

Last but not least were people who only wanted the conversion to be in to the Islamic religion and that would make them very happy and accepting. For them it was a matter of religious belief rather than a hypothetical question related to an idea or a possibility. (5%)

The question still remains and every person is entitled to his/her opinion but does that give us the right to be judgmental. Do we fully let go of our prejudices to have a tolerant society? Do we believe in live and let live? Or more importantly can we do that in the first place?

Can violence be a means of defending Human Rights?

Group 4: Can violence be a means of defending Human Rights?

In recent years we’ve seen several examples of leaders trying to excuse the use of violence by saying it’s necessary to defend human rights. That was the case with the NATO interventions in Kosovo, the US attack on Iraq and the Egyptian emergency laws. But is violence, which in essense is opposed to human rights, a legitimate means to protect the very same rights?

It has always been debatable whether the use of violence is appropriate in the fight for human rights; some people say that if you run out of peaceful approaches, force is the shortest way of achieving enforcement of human rights. Yet the contradictory nature of this argument makes it less convincing. It is against the human nature to be forced to think in a certain way. Furthermore, violence brings violence. An eye for an eye and soon the whole world will be blind. This illustrates the unfruitful reality of using violence as a means for securing human rights. But how then, can human rights be spread and enforced?

Essentially, the question needs to be divided between how to spread human rights and how to make sure these are enforced. The former should be through convincing arguments and good examples. We need to explain why human rights benefit us all. The latter must happen through cultural and political pressure. In the case of Mohandas Gandhi we’ve experienced an example of how it’s possible through non-violent resistance to be successful in securing the enforcement of human rights.

This illustrates the need of a division between violence and power. While violence, due to its contradictory nature and the consequences thereof, is an undesired means of securing human rights, power can be used to achieve this goal. Power can be understood both in terms of knowledge and intellectual capabilities as well as political power. These instruments can and should be used to secure human rights as they both lie within the human rights themselves. Human rights is a universal package. Just choosing to enforce the rights that suit you is not a viable option. Other people will most likely have other priorities and in the end this approach means that none of the rights will be enforced.

So to answer the original question, whether violence is a legitimate means to protect human rights, the answer is: Probably not. Using power, both knowledge-based and political, is much more fruitful if your objective is to secure a continued enforcement of human rights.

Group Three 1st Post : “ Are there limits to freedom of expression? “

This article has as a starting point several discussions about freedom of expression. In article 19 in the UN Universal declaration of human rights which state that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

It is great to create a platform for dialogue trying to bridge cultural gabs and to have one overall strategy for making the whole process work out by not only concentrating on the specific issues that people usually fights about but rather to cultivate our shared points of views from a wider perspective. We have had a lot of interesting discussions about the topic, and it is clear to us that we simply look at freedom of expression from different perspectives but debate is part of the dialogue and we don’t have always to agree to get along.

We will try the difficult, but interesting task, of presenting each other’s viewpoints. The Egyptian side will make the arguments of the Danes clear while the Danish side will present the viewpoints of the Egyptians. By this we hope to demonstrate that by understanding each other’s viewpoints we have come a long way. We do not have to change opinions, but by knowing how each other think and accepting the differences we have already gained a lot.

In our group we all agreed that freedom of expression is very important. But at the same time we realized that we have different opinions of and if there are limits of freedom of expression.

Most Egyptians believe that there are some limits to freedom of expression. These are very considered to be very important. You have the right to criticize political system or figures, society – even your family. But you cannot criticize without being backed by good arguments nor only for the sake of criticizing. Also, it is not okay to insult no matter what. You should not be allowed to say whatever you want when it hurts others feelings. The Egyptian side differs between well-argued criticism and insult. The first is considered okay whereas the second is not.

Whereas the Egyptian side would like some formalized limitations to freedom of expression so that it is not acceptable to hurt others feelings the Danish viewpoint differs a bit. In Denmark most people believe in the infinite freedom of speech/expression without any limitation. Anyone can say whatever s/he wants to say whenever s/he wants. The freedom of expression only has a limit if one urge to harm others physically. Most Danes differ between hurting feeling and hurting physically. Hurting feelings should not be made illegal from the Danish point of view. That does not mean that the Danes in our group believe that you should say whatever you want just because you have the right to do it. You should consider how your expressions affect other people. But at the bottom-line, you have the right to say whatever you want.

For some other cultures some Danes did some practices that promoted religious hatred. But most Danes consider religion to be a personal issue and for other it’s just a nonissue. They have their own values but at the same time they are not pushing their religious or even nonreligious views on other things in life.

Finally , it seems that the difference between the Egyptian and Danish points of view is whether there should be a formalized limits to freedom of expression or not , and “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity“ . If people become more tolerant trying to know the others , understanding their differences and not necessarily accepting it , that would be a far better indicator than pre-judging conceiving ideas about them and for our group Based on the respect we agreed to give to one another its much better to see the world through out the lens of the other side cultural perspective reaching out better results and this is just the beginning .

Missing Egypt

About a month or so ago, I went on the first out of three seminars to Egypt more specific Cairo, with nine other Danes, that changed me and my perspective of life in many ways.

I became a part of this project to begin with, because I wanted to learn more about the Middle East and the people who live there and because I believe that Human Rights are human rights and should be obligatory in every country in the world.

I do not consider myself a prejudiced person. I believe that I am open to many things and I accept many ways of living. But before travelling to Cairo, I did worry a tiny bit about how understanding the Egyptians would be of my way of living and dressing.

After returning home from Cairo, I can now officially cast that tiny prejudice away for good. The Egyptians we met at the first seminar were friendly, open-minded people and even though some were more religious than others, we could still discuss touchy subjects, without totally disagreeing.

I have learned so much from my first contact with people who live in the Middle East, people who live in Egypt. I have been positively surprised at how friendly they all seem to be, even random people we met on the streets of the busy Cairo.

It's normal for tourists on holiday in a country they've never been to before, to take pictures of everything they see that exites them or fascinates them. On the days where we were discovering Cairo by foot, there were actually local people who wanted to take pictures of us! Now that was definitely something, and in a way very flattering.

Cairo was a wonderful city. Full of life, full of people. Of course there were also a lot of poor people on the streets. A sad thing indeed, and hopefully a problem that the government is trying to fix on some level. No person deserves to live their lives on a street. I was also surprised at how many children were working on places with lots of tourists. Also a problem I hope the government will at some point try to help prevent.

Yes, Cairo was definitely a positive experience. I can't want to go back this May. The main reason for my exitement is to see all the friends we made at the seminar, but also to experience a big city that on many levels is so much more rich than Copenhagen, so much more full of life and diversity.

Only one thing scares me about Cairo: the traffic, which I highly doubt I'll ever, ever get used to!

/Maria

group 2: voting in elections between Egypt and Denmark

Our main question was about the voting in elections, and how such a thing differs between Egypt and Denmark, we believed that the best way to get to know the real situation was to interact with ordinary people in the streets from various age groups and see how they view the situation, and we got real interesting results.

Firstly, for the important role political parties are supposed to play in elections, as candidates are supposed to reprsent defferent political parties that reflect in turn different interests of the people, we found that no one is a member in any political party, in both Egypt and Denmark, this could be for the weakness of those political parties, or that one political party is highly popular and reflects the interests of most of the people, so they find it useless to join any party.

About the voting ID, which is conducted in Egypt only not Denmark, it appeared that 75.6% of Egyptians do not have a voting ID, and this could be for the complications of issuing a voting ID for some people, and the whole process is not very accurate, also untill recently there have been a deadline for getting the voting ID, and many people did not know about this deadline so they did not get their IDs.

We wanted to know the real percentage of those who vote, and why do or don’’t they vote, the results were that 83% of Egyptians who conducted the survey do not vote, and 17% do vote, those who did vote was for they believe it was their right, or they do vote because it did not cost them anything, and as for those who did not vote 40% of them do not trust the government, and 36% of them did not believe their vote matters. On the other hand in Denmark, the percentage of those who conducted the survey who vote came out to be 86%, a real high one compared to that of Egypt, they vote because they believe it is their right to do so, while the rest who did not vote was because they do not care. In addition to voting, asking people to vote is something we wanted to know about too, so we came up that in Egypt 44% of those who conducted the survey said they do tell others to vote, while 56% said they do not, and as for Denmark, those who conducted the survey do not ask people particularly to vote, but they think it's important to vote.

Another important aspect should be taken into consideration, which is of the importance of the gender and religion of the candidate, in Egypt it appeared that 32% of those who conducted the survey believed the gender and religion of the candidate mattered, and 68% did not matter for them, also for those who said yes, 60% were concerned more with the religion rather than the gender, and 40% were concerned with the gender rather than the religion. In Denmark, 86% are not concerned with the gender or religion of the candidate, while the other 14% were concerned just for the fear of not having neutrality.

And as for being awre of the program of the candidate, in Egypt 48.3% said they were not aware of the programs of candidates, and 51.6% were aware of them, while in Denmark, 67.6% of those who conducted the survey are aware of candidates’ programs, 9.6% are not aware of them, and 13.3% knew a little about them. Of course the role of the media is highly important to be discussed at this point, concerning this, in Egypt 50.3% believed the media played no role in helping to know about the candidates and their programs, and 49.7% believed the media has a great role in doing so, while in Denmark, 26.6% believed the media had an influence in this field whether positive or negative, and the rest were divided, some did not know much about that influence of the media, and others did not believe it has an influence in the first place. Concerning the role og NGOs in the election and voting process, it appeared it is not really relevant in Denmark, while in Egypt 58.7% believed NGOs do not play an important role in spreading awarness among people about elections and candidates, and about 30% believed they do. In any country were channels are weak between government/political parties and the people, there is always a shift to the media and NGOs to fill in this empty role, but as the survey shows, in such a situation both the media and NGOs do not play this role too.

Voting sometimes is biased for the reasons people choose a certain candidate for, it is not always about their efficiency or programs, that is why we asked about this too, and we found out that in Egypt 11% voted for a certain candidate because they know him/her personally, whether a relative, a friend, or someone told them to vote for him/her, 62% voted for a certain candidate because they believe in his/her efficiency, and 27% voted for a certain candidate because it does not make a difference for them, they are all alike. While in Denmark it came up that 63.6% choose a certain candidate because of his/her program, and the rest because they believe they are alike.

Concerning Egypt only, there is a problem that people go voting just to get money that some candidates use to buy their votes, so the survey showed that 88.6% believed that people do go voting to get money, and 11.4% believed they did not, those 88.6% believed that it is a problem of poverty that the government should work on fixing to avoid biasness of the elections, others beleieved there should be like an agent to monitor elections also to avoid such abuses, and others believed it couldnot be solved.

The last thing we asked about was whether people voted or not in the last electins, in Denmark, 88% said yes they voted last elections, while in Egypt it was nearly the opposite, 88.4% of those who conducted the survey did not vote last elections, and 11.6% did vote.
Such a survey helped us a lot to reveal to you the differences between Egypt and Denmark concerning the voting issue,specially that Egypt is close to have parliamentary elections and presidential ones afterwards, such problems that appear from the survey should be taken into consideration and set to be solved quickly, we do not want to witness another elections that do not reflect what do people really want due to procedural problems, transparency problems, and problems of trust as well. In Denmark too, we can notice from the survey that the situation is better than Egypt, but also it showed some deficiencies that needed to be considered, next step would be to set some certain mechanisms to solve those problems, both in Egypt and Denmark.

Schedule

Hi,

In the next 10 weeks, 10 texts will be posted on human rights and communication. We are 5 groups, which will all have to write 2 texts each. Here are the deadlines:

Group 1:
19th February
29th March

Group 2:

26th February

2nd April

Group 3:

5th March

9th April

Group 4:

12th March

16th April

Group 5:

19th March

23th April

I am looking very much forward to reading your posts :)

Best,

Jonas Lybech Jensen

Leader, The Danish Steering Committee