As part of French-German diplomatic cooperation, the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law was launched to encourage outstanding activists in this field. French and German embassies around the world nominate a number of candidates for the laurel, and 15 winners are selected by a supreme committee comprising of the French foreign minister and his German counterpart. In 2017, a Kuwaiti activist was chosen for his work on a parliamentary monitoring website called Raqib50.com, which was launched in 2011.

Abdullah Al-Khonaini told Kuwait Times that the site focuses on the principle of transparency by putting out all facts about the performance of parliamentarians, especially the percentage of their attendance and absence, the laws that they voted for or against, and draft laws that relate to political and legal developments in Kuwait. The Raqib50 website is one of the projects of the Sout-Al Kuwait group, which promotes awareness in the Kuwaiti society of people’s constitutional rights and disseminates democratic culture in the country.

“Hamad Al-Jedaie and I, the co-founders of the parliament watchdog, go to the National Assembly every day. We sit down with MPs to learn about the performance of the parliament and read the internal rules. Most of the parliament’s work is written in detail. Our visits and encounters have given us an idea of how things work. We also composed a list of the most important data that affect laws and state institutions. The administration of documentation in parliament is very cooperative, because what they have is public information. However, it isn’t publicly available to voters,” Khonaini said.

The parliament watchdog site in its latest update added the details of the latest grilling, or interpellation, of a minister. “It is impossible to inquire at the parliament about the performance of a specific deputy - the information will be in the form of reports and the manual records of the committees, which make up more than 900 pages sometimes. Of course, we cannot assess the impact of Raqib50 on the decisions of the electorate, but the more they rely on the site, the more aware they become, which helps them to make the right decision when electing candidates,” Khonaini explained.

He stressed that the prize, even if it is in his name, does not mean that it is for him alone. “The award is not for me - it’s for the team of Raqib50. We never expected this great recognition that helped in publicizing the website. Many people had never heard about the site until we won the award, so I am grateful to the French and German embassies for their support,” he concluded.

By Athoob Al-Shuaibi