The Al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue (RCD) held a discussion session on Wednesday titled "Civil Society Organizations: Roles, Objectives, and Assessment" to examine the reality of civil work and assess the performance of non-governmental organizations in Iraq.
While highlighting the prominent roles and tasks undertaken by non-governmental organizations, Ashraf Al-Dahan, the Director General of the Non-Governmental Organizations Department at the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, confirmed that civil society organizations play pivotal and significant roles in the Iraqi scene.
Al-Dahan told the Video News Agency that the work of these organizations focuses on key areas including promoting democracy, empowering women, and developing youth capacities, in addition to rejecting violence and extremism and promoting peaceful coexistence, pointing out that tangible success stories have been achieved in these fields, alongside the humanitarian field which forms the major pillar of their work.
Regarding the management and funding of civil work, Al-Dahan clarified that funding sources vary between external and internal, pointing out that external funding comes through grants provided by international organizations and UN agencies funded by taxpayers in those countries to direct towards charitable and humanitarian projects according to specific mechanisms, while internal funding relies on donations and contributions from local donors.
In terms of the field and administrative challenges facing civil staff during the implementation of their programs, Engineer Suja Al-Bayati revealed the existence of multiple obstacles that still affect the smoothness of work.
Al-Bayati told the Video News Agency that the most prominent of these challenges were previously represented in the complexities of registration procedures and security checks, noting that the Department of Organizations has made efforts to resolve these issues, but there are other requirements related to the endorsement of the organization's location and the security checks of its activities in residential and field areas.
Regarding the mechanisms to address these obstacles and improve the administrative reality, Al-Bayati pointed to a weakness in the level of cooperation and coordination between government institutions and local administrations in the provinces with civil organizations, calling for comprehensive governmental support that establishes a real partnership ensuring that organizations are treated as supportive and complementary to governmental efforts rather than obstacles to them.