Nancy Okail is an Egyptian activist and a scholar with a focus on security, human rights, democracy and power relations of foreign aid.
In 2013, Okail was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison in the controversial Egyptian court case against local and foreign non-governmental organization (NGOs).
She has more than 13 years’ experience in promoting democracy and development in the Middle East/North Africa region and is a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
The NGO workers, whose offices were raided on December 29, 2011, were arrested on allegations of illegal funding from foreign donors, working without legal permits, and fomenting unrest in Egypt.
"When the U.S. decides to just give away the military aid to Egypt without considering the consequences on us," Okail expressed to the New York Times, "it sends a message that the West and the U.S. don’t care about democracy and human rights.
"[12] Okail gained international media attention for a display of resistance while on trial: seated in the defendants’ cage in the courtroom, Okail read a copy of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia - an action that political analyst Thomas Friedman called, "[a] gesture of resistance to the Egyptian military regime that had put on trial democracy advocates who dared to partner with Egyptians in promoting democracy in a country that supposedly just had a democratic revolution."
Based in Washington DC, TIMEP is a newly established, nonpartisan, and nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and supporting Middle Eastern countries undergoing democratic transitions.
TIMEP seeks to focus on emerging democracies and areas of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa with the aim of understanding society, political life, and the economy from a nuanced, comprehensive perspective.
The world has celebrated the rising stars of the "Arab Spring" revolutions and appreciated their contributions to bringing about change, but many others remain unrecognized, their grievances marginalized or ignored.