Belady: An Island for Humanity

I will use it partially as an additional grant that would make my organization scale. The grant will be roughly 1.5x my yearly budget. 

Thus, it will give me room to expand the infrastructure of our work and fill in gaps that will allow us to publicize and scale-up: 

a. We will hire media and communication experts that will set the structure to increase and enhance our reach and visibility. 

b. We will enhance the structure of the EPA (discussed in detail below) to become a state-of-the-art-efficient website. 

c. We will establish our long-awaited psychological care virtual care program. As seeking psychological assistance is stigmatized in Egypt in specific and the Middle East in general, we will conduct an interactive psychological education program, in which each session will be developed from the "customer feedback" given on the page. Specialists will respond to messages and direct clients to appropriate care. 

In 2012, we, Egyptian and Egyptian American activists formed Belady (My Country)-an Island for Humanity to solve community problems through community resources. We worked on the most pressing problems facing underprivileged communities like ridding urban slumps from garbage dumps and rehabilitating children who live in the streets and reconciling them with their families. 

In 2013, there was a military coup that was followed by a crackdown on civil society. In 2014, 8 members of our team were arrested by Egyptian police. They spent the next three years in jail. 

The team was only released because of the tremendous grace and courage of local and international human rights organizations and activists. The case of director and founder Aya Hijazi came to national attention in the U.S. when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for her release and when President Trump persuaded Egyptian President Sisi to release her with the other members and staff of Belady. 

Belady’s members who moved to the U.S. and Tunisia took it upon themselves to do everything they could to continue to serve. Within just 2 months from release, they re-established Belady in the US. and started supporting the women and children they left behind in Egyptian prisons.

Belady aims to liberate women and children by addressing structural barriers that institutionalize violence and injustice by documenting human rights violations and educating society and decision-makers about them. 

In Tunisia and Egypt, our work focuses on liberating women and children who try to change society but are targeted because of using their right of free speech and assembly, or for political reasons.

Belady has documented 1510 cases of arrest of children and 1222 cases of the arrest of women and girls from 2013 to date. 

Arrests are arbitrary and accompanied by human rights violations that often amount to a loss of life due to torture, medical negligence, death sentences, and extrajudicial killings. 

We are in the process of developing the Egyptian Prison Atlas (EPA), the first up-to-date, human-rights-friendly, and transparent database that will be (a) the alternative source for the regime’s violations; (b) the go-to for independent and international media, civil society organizations, lawyers and activists; (c) a tool for record-keeping, (d) accountability, and (e) the first brick for transitional justice. We believe that such gathering and exhibiting of data is our historical duty towards Egypt and the first brick towards a future hopeful transitional justice.

Belady disrupts the regime's blackout on information about the imprisonment of human rights defenders and activists.

The blackouts occur through tarnishing their reputation, blocking and trolling their social media accounts, and shutting down civil society organizations and websites.

The end result is that there is no current watchdog for the abuses of the Egyptian regime. The best that Egypt has are estimates from human rights organizations.

The EPA will be the first comprehensive database documenting the rights violations committed by the regime against imprisoned women and children, and eventually all political prisoners. 

Further, the EPA will be a record keeper of the violations, at a time when there are no records.

Finally, the EPA counters the narrative of the regime, which claims abstractly that "there are no human rights violations" or "there are no political prisoners". Through Belady's meticulous and tiresome work, we present thousands of detailed cases of abuse accompanied by legal documents and victims' testimonies. 

Further, we are working on 3-D representations of the prisons in which political prisoners are held, which is un-precedent work in the Human Rights arena. 

In the last two years alone (2019-2020) we provided legal and psychological assistance to more than 200 children and 300 women, including more than 200 who were released. 

We have been collecting data and doing research on politically arrested women and children since 2017. 

The EPA, our work in progress, will expand our data collection and research capabilities and allow other organizations to share their data as well. 

The EPA will be a rare reliable source for human rights violations of politically arrested women and children for independent and international media, civil society organizations, lawyers, international NGOs, etc. With this information, advocates for the release of women and children prisoners and addressing the injustices of Egypt’s corrupt regime will have pools of data to support their work. With the EPA, we will act as a watchdog over the Egyptian regime and ensure that human rights violators are held accountable.