The International Journal
of Not-for-Profit Law

Volume 9, Issue 2, April 2007

The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law devotes this issue’s special section to the Middle East, with four articles by former Senior Research Fellows at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. We begin with overviews of civil society in the Arab region from two different perspectives, by Ziad Abdel Samad, Executive Director of the Arab NGO Network for Development, and Sa’ed Karajah, Senior Partner at the law firm of Karajah & Associates in Amman, Jordan. Next, Chafika Kahina Bouagache, a Staff Attorney and Program Chief of the American Bar Association in Rabat, Morocco, assesses Algerian association law in the context of the nation’s troubled past. Finally, Mohamed Agati, Executive Manager of the Development Support Center for Consultancy and Training in Cairo, provides a critique of NGO law in Egypt, focusing on the law’s effects on organizations’ transparency and accountability.

We feature two articles on other topics as well. Matti Muukonen, a professor in the Department of Law, University of Joensuu, Finland, summarizes Finnish association law. And Allison H. Fine of Demos, the author of the recently published Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, examines how new technologies can help civil society activists achieve their goals.

We thank all who made this issue possible: the Chronicle of Philanthropy, for allowing us to reprint Allison Fine’s article; Rebecca See and Kareem Elbayar, for their meticulous web work; and, as always, our incisive and gracious authors.

We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the United States Department of State, which made possible our special section on the Middle East. This project was funded, in part, through the Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office of Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) under Grant Number S-NEAPI-04-GR-145. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the Author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State. MEPI is a Presidential initiative founded to support economic, political, and educational reform efforts in the Middle East and expand opportunity for all people of the region, especially women and youth. More information about MEPI can be found at: “www.mepi.state.gov.”

Stephen Bates
Editor
International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law
sbates@icnl.org