of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) - What global challenge or opening is your organization discussing?
It is no doubt the increasing inequality. If the current trends of wealth concentration continue for another few decades, then a tiny minority of us will control all the world's wealth. The challenge is to reverse this trend, and the immense task we are all faced with is how to do that especially those who benefit from this wealth concentration are the ones who decide the policy, control coercive and non-coercive forms of power, and shape the discourse around these issues. - What project are you most excited about and why?
This dire situation makes a discussion on alternative models and the transition to it more relevant and urgent than ever. It is usually when crisis hits that serious transformations tend to happen, and we are undoubtedly facing an economic and environmental crisis that a continuation of the current model will only lead to its intensification. The crucial question is: how much worse does it need to get, before the world is able to do anything about it? One would hope that we can learn from past experiences and develop a sense of what a looming crisis looks like, and manage some aspects of it preemptively. However, observing policies of institutions like the IMF, this does not seem to be the case. This is why, the EPWG’s work in general and the Alternatives Project in particular, is more relevant than ever. The Alternatives Project is not only important to help us start envisioning what a good and fair economic model for a healthy and sustainable future might look like, but also to warn us about what our world would look like if we just sit back and do nothing. - Why is collective work with fellow members important to your organization?
Collective action has always been romanticized, but what we need now is for collective action to be “practicalized”, that is to present and rebrand it as the most practical approach to the current global struggles. The kind of economic and environmental struggles that the world is facing at the moment cannot be dealt with if we remain atomized, over-dependent on individual initiative or the so-called “entrepreneurial spirit”. EIPR recently published a new report on the International Finance Corporation’s use of tax havens and politically connected officials in their development investments in Egypt. To learn more about their findings and for a copy of the full report please see this link. |