Message from the Honory Chairman

By reason of location, history and culture, Egypt has to adopt a foreign policy that enables it to interact with the region of the Middle East as well as the world at large. As the scope for Egyptian foreign policy has broadened and deepened during the last half century, Egypt’s active role in regional and international issues has correspondingly grown in both extent and influence.

While Egyptian foreign policy has largely been governed by internal factors, its initiation has rebounded on these very factors, thereby bringing them into sharper focus. In the last two decades in particular, this interrelationship has intensified, prompting Egyptian foreign policy makers to create a regional and international environment in which the needs for the country’s development could be met.

The far-reaching changes that have impinged on the international scene have reshaped the world order and redefined power politics. In tandem, the world economic order has also been transformed. Other factors have accelerated the change; among them are the rapid development of information technology and the emergence of the cultural element in international relations. The 1990s are noted for the rise of religious and ethnic conflicts, a phenomenon that has led to the fall of some regimes and the rise of others, such as Somalia and Afghanistan. Altogether such radical changes have put additional burdens on foreign policy makers who had to revise their analyses as well as their practices and, not least, heighten public awareness of the issues at hand.

Such mounting responsibilities called for the formation of an Egyptian independent institution that would pool together the expertise and ideas of its members in open debate, take initiatives regarding pressing issues of national interest and raise the level of public awareness of the changes occurring on the world stage. In furtherance of these aims such a forum would also provide the opportunity for representatives of the Egyptian civil society to meet with their foreign counterparts to exchange views on various subjects of mutual concern, including those which govern relations between their respective countries or between the organizations they represent.

For this purpose, among others, a group of Egyptian intellectuals and professionals interested in foreign policy issues came together in 1999 to form the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs (ECFA) with a view to realizing the objectives on which they had agreed. The group comprised prominent individuals with different vocational backgrounds such as diplomats, academics, military experts, businessmen, writers and other public figures.

ECFA was registered on May 2, 1999 in accordance with Law 32 of 1964 at the General Department for Non-Governmental Organizations of the Ministry of Social Affairs under number 413.

Ambassador Abdel Raouf EL Reedy

Chairman