The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law

The ICNL Small Grant Program

ICNL announces the availability of Small Grants of up to USD $8,000 to support advocacy and media campaigns, research, trainings, workshops, and other efforts by local organizations in the Middle East and North Africa advocating for civil society law reform. Learn More and Apply.
Programs > By Location > Middle East and North Africa
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Programs By Location: Middle East and North Africa

ICNL's work in the Middle East / North Africa (MENA) region reflects our core methodology of working with local partners to support indigenous law reform efforts rather than supplanting or directing their work. ICNL is pleased to partner with governments and civil society organizations (CSOs) to achieve positive reform of the framework laws governing civil society, thereby promoting an enabling environment for civil society in this region.

Current Project Highlights

The Associative Rights Initiative

Lebanese Minister of the Interior Dr. Ahmad Fatfat delivers an Opening Address to participants of an ICNL conference in Beirut

ICNL's Associative Rights Initiative promotes ongoing law reform initiatives in the MENA region by sponsoring local research and providing funding for locally-designed projects to promote civil society and civil society law reform. The Associative Rights Initiative includes the following programs:

Senior Research Fellowship: Six civil society activists and attorneys from the MENA region were selected from a highly competitive pool to come to ICNL's Washington, DC headquarters for a one-month fellowship on civil society law in the summers of 2006 and 2007. The six Senior Fellows were selected to research and write on topics of their choice related to civil society law reform in their countries. To view their research papers, published in special issues of the International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, select from the links below:

Law Reform Conference: ICNL organized a conference on Strengthening Civil Society in the Arab Region - Models for Legal Reform in Beirut, Lebanon in July of 2006. This conference brought together several dozen leading lawyers, academics, and civil society activists to consider critical issues relating to the role of the laws governing civil society in promoting a stronger civil society in the Arab world. For more information, and to view selected presentations and distributed materials, visit the conference web page.

Civil Society Dialogue Preparatory Meeting to the 2006 Forum for the Future: ICNL organized the two-day Preparatory Meeting Assessing the Arab Legal Environment: A Map for Development in Amman, Jordan from October 30 - 31, 2006. The Preparatory Meeting was a unique opportunity for more than 40 Arab civil society leaders from 13 countries to discuss priorities, strategies, and goals designed to create an enabling legal environment for civil society in the Arab world, one of the four civil society themes of the 2006 Forum for the Future. Participants designed a presentation to the G8 and Arab governments, and six representatives selected by the group went on to deliver the presentation to G8 and MENA government representatives at the 2006 Forum for the Future at the Dead Sea in Jordan.

Small Grants: As a final component of the Associative Rights Initiative, ICNL solicited proposals from attorneys and civil society activists throughout the MENA region for projects that could be funded with small grants. Five grants were distributed in 2006 and 2007 to fund projects that furthered law reform in the applicants' home countries, including:

  • Workshops held in Algeria and Yemen that resulted in draft law proposals;
  • A workshop in Jordan to train key CSOs on advocacy techniques;
  • A workshop in Egypt to discuss strategies for NGO sustainability in politically difficult environments; and
  • A workshop in Iraq to build consensus around one of several competing draft CSO laws.

Gulf States CSO Law Reform Initiative


ICNL workshop participants in Bahrain work together to generate recommendations for future law reform efforts in their country

ICNL's Gulf States CSO Law Reform Initiative supports the dissemination of principles to guide effective, progressive reform of laws governing civil society to key CSO leaders in the Arab Gulf region. In addition to a region-wide conference held in Jordan, ICNL provided assistance to ongoing civil society law reform efforts in Yemen and Bahrain by holding law reform workshops in those countries. To learn more about the workshops, and to view selected presentations and distributed materials, please select from the links below:

Completed Project Highlights

Iraq: ICNL provided technical legal expertise to a working group comprised of USAID and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) advisors on revising Order No. 45 on Non-Governmental Organizations before the transition of governing authority on June 30, 2004. During the course of the project, ICNL provided three formal sets of technical comments, as well as almost daily informal comments and advice, designed to ensure that the revised Order 45 would be a progressive law that reflected international best practices. A revised Order was not put in place; however, ICNL has continued to engage in Iraq, most recently by assisting Iraqi civil society groups in 2005 as they sought to draft a new law to be considered by the Iraqi Council of Representatives.

Additional Resources

ICNL has collected dozens of primary and secondary research materials on topics related to civil society in the MENA region. Visit the ICNL Online Library to access our collection of resources in the Arabic language as well as our regional and country-specific research tools.

This page was last updated 19-Mar-2008