Upon an invitation from the US Secretary of State John Kerry, Bahey eldin Hassan, the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, will participate in the Civil Society Forum which will be held during the Africa-US summit in Washington DC on August 4 to 6.
Preparations for the summit initially made no provision for a civil society forum in which non-governmental organizations could discuss common concerns, especially human rights. The forum, however, was organised in response to demands by NGOs, among them the CIHRS, which formed a joint delegation with three other African regional networks. The delegation included John Foley from the East and Horn of Africa Human Right Defenders Project; Arnold Tsunga from the South African Human Rights Defenders Network; Maximillienne Ngo Mbe from the Central African Human Rights Defenders Network; Imam Baba Leigh, a human rights defender; and Ziad Abdeltawab, the deputy director of the CIHRS.
Other prominent rights advocates from North Africa participated in the meetings, including Abdelaziz Nouaydi, the former president of the Moroccan Adala Association; Nassera Dutour, the official spokeswoman of the Collective of the Families of the Disappeared in Algeria; Kamel Labidi, a Tunisian human rights defender and an expert in media freedom issues; and Elham Saudi, the director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya.
The joint African delegation held several meetings in the US capital in the second half of June.
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