ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the emergence of women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Middle East and North Africa, the legal and other constraints that they face, the issues to which they are orientated, and the articulation of these issues and concerns in the NGO document. More recently, preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing in September 1995, raised further interest in the role and activities of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the region. Women’s NGOs that are service oriented are the most numerous and the most traditional of the women’s organizations. As in many other countries, such organizations have sometimes been criticized for having a ‘welfare’ approach, and they are largely staffed by middle-class and elite women, who sometimes have a patronizing attitude towards the poor, disabled, or rural women for whom they deliver services.
