Podcast
23: When professionalizing your organization makes you safer
Like many mission-driven organisations, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights didn’t give much thought to its internal structure and processes in its early years. Its task was to defend those whose rights were being abused, not to build an administrative paragon. But there came a moment, with the organization growing, when ad hoc informality no longer seemed viable and the leadership began to put new systems in place, adding more oversight in the form of a board. For many in the human rights field, investing in what seems like bureaucracy can seem in contradiction to the work – at best a drain on energy, and at worst, a distraction from the mission. Veteran EIPR staffer and eventually executive director Gasser Abdel-Razek recalls the pros and cons of the path EIPR took, and the very personal significance it held for him on the day he found himself under interrogation.