Syria’s first lady calls for civil activism.
Syria’s first lady has called for the country’s citizens to play a more active role in the country’s social and economic life.
Syrian First Lady Asma Al-Assad encouraged her fellow Syrians to become more involved in non governmental organizations (NGOs) during a recent conference in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to local media outlets.
Civil society organizations are relatively rare in Syria due to the lengthy and difficult process involved in securing permission from the government to establish an NGO.
“There is a maturation of the whole trend in Syria towards the empowering of what we call civil society,” Dr Samir Al-Taqi, Director of the Orient Center for International Studies in Damascus, told The Media Line.
“Previously the use of civil society in Syria has been used not as a link to empower [social or environmental] aims but rather used on a political basis,” he said. “Syrian society is now elaborating on a new trend towards the formation and multiplication of civil society bodies.”
I’m tagging this ‘nonprofits’ because in the US that’s the term used instead of ‘NGO.’