In the 1980s, officials of Matrouh Governorate, located on Egypt’s northern coast, began launching the “Agiba” project. The founding of that tourist village had not yet been announced, but testimonies put forward by the writer Donald Cole in his book (The People of Matrouh: Bedouin and Holidaymakers) show that the governor of Matrouh at the time, Yousry El-Shamy, together with the prime minister of the day (whose name he did not mention), occupied areas of land to build chalets close to the sea, without first offering them to citizens, because those in charge of the project believed it should be confined to a homogeneous group that did not include the nouveaux riches. For that reason the project was not officially announced, and the governor personally took charge of marketing it through personal contacts and relationships.
At that time the law prohibited building less than 500 metres from the sea, as Egyptian law banned the construction of any structures on sea shores, including the shores of Matrouh Governorate, without obtaining the necessary approvals. This continued as the laws evolved: according to Article 87 of the Water Resources and Irrigation Law No. 147 of 2021, the construction of private-purpose or public-benefit structures within the designated prohibited zone is banned, except in cases of extreme necessity and after obtaining prior approval from the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation and the Ministry of Environment. In addition, Article 73 of Environment Law No. 4 of 1994 prohibits the construction of any structures on the Republic’s sea shores for a distance of 200 metres inland from the shoreline, except after the approval of the competent administrative authority in coordination with the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (we note here that the distance prescribed for building shrank from 500 metres to 200 metres in 1994).
In Matrouh Governorate, local decisions may be issued that set out special planning and building requirements for some coastal areas. For example, decision No. 154 of 2019 was issued designating a specific area, from Cleopatra’s Rock in the east to the eastern boundary of the Armed Forces hotel at El-Abyad in the west and to the Marsa Matrouh-Agiba road in the south, as a replanning zone subject to the provisions of Article 44 of Unified Building Law No. 119 of 2008. Therefore, before undertaking any construction work on Matrouh’s shores, the relevant national and local laws and regulations must be consulted, and it must be ensured that the required permits and approvals have been obtained from the competent authorities, such as the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, the Ministry of Environment and the Egyptian General Authority for Shore Protection.
Agiba village differs from the other tourist villages on the North Coast: the project is owned by the governorate, unlike the other villages, which are owned by certain ministries, associations or the private sector. The village extends over an area 2 kilometres long and 200 metres wide, on a beach distinguished by its beautiful white sand, 35 kilometres west of Marsa Matrouh, near El-Zawya El-Senussiya and the village of Umm El-Rakham. Agiba beach lies 30 metres from the Agiba plateau, which is about 28 kilometres west of the city of Marsa Matrouh.
Last December, 2024, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced, during the government’s weekly press conference, a detailed plan to develop the north-western coast region, which extends along 260 kilometres of beaches, with the aim of turning it into a global tourist destination and maximising its tourism returns. He explained that the region had been divided into three sectors: from Ras El-Hekma to Marsa Matrouh, from Marsa Matrouh to Sidi Barrani, and from Sidi Barrani to Salloum, noting that the government was seeking to draw up clear detailed plans for each of these areas, with the aim of implementing them in the coming period so that it would become a global tourist attraction, in parallel with the Red Sea region, and that the authorities were working to achieve the greatest possible use of new and renewable energy in these projects, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, in line with sustainable development trends. This raised questions and concern among residents in that area.
Matrouh Governorate witnessed widespread controversy among its residents in the last week of last December, especially among the owners of chalets in the Agiba area, after news circulated of plans to remove those chalets on the pretext of developing the area and investing in it, starting from the middle of this January. This controversy escalated after a large number of citizens expressed their dissatisfaction on the social media site “Facebook” with the sudden decisions, which they described as threatening their property and their social security.
The appeals from those affected were clear, demanding an official clarification from the governorate or any relevant government body to clarify the facts. Citizens considered that the absence of official communication opens the door to rumours and raises greater fears, especially after the circulation of a paper addressed to the current governor of Matrouh, Khaled Shoeib, and to Ayman Naeem Thabet, secretary-general of the Ministry of Defence, notifying them that the Ministry of Defence, represented by the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, had handed over the coordinates of the Agiba chalets area, that an expropriation decision needed to be issued for it, and that coordination with the governorate should begin to build walls around the chalets area, dated 14 December of last year, 2024; this angered the owners.
Salah Khaled, one of those affected, says in his conversation with us: “Are these decisions trial balloons or actual plans? We know nothing, and we demand a response from officials.” He spoke about the documentation of their ownership of these chalets for many decades with official documents issued by the state. He explains: “We bought the chalets from the governorate itself, with officially registered contracts, and now we are surprised by expropriation decisions on the pretext of development. If a citizen who buys from the government itself does not feel safe, where do we go?” Khaled points to the importance of taking the social and human dimension into account in any development plans, stressing that their places are not informal but settled, and enjoy public utilities such as water and electricity, and explaining that development should cover empty areas away from places of residence, and not come at the expense of people’s lives and memories.
International humanitarian law defined forced displacement as “the forced and unlawful eviction of a group of individuals and populations from the land on which they reside”, a practice associated with cleansing and with arbitrary, coercive measures carried out by governments or fanatical groups against a particular ethnic or religious group, and sometimes against several groups, with the aim of clearing certain lands for an alternative elite or a particular group.”, and during last year, 2024, Cairo witnessed an escalation of protests among citizens in many areas, following government decisions to expropriate their property for the purpose of public benefit, as happened with the residents of Ras El-Hekma and the village of Gemima in the Dabaa area of Matrouh, the El-Gamil district in Port Said, and the residents of the Faisal area and the Ring Road in Giza Governorate, even though the Egyptian Constitution, as amended in 2019, prohibits forced displacement in its Article 63 , which states: “Arbitrary forced displacement of citizens in all its forms and manifestations is prohibited, and violation thereof is a crime that is not subject to a statute of limitations.”
Removal without community dialogue
Assem Fayez, one of those affected by the removal of the chalets, explains in his conversation with Zawia3: “All we know is that the decision includes the Agiba chalets, and no one has specified for us the area the decision covers. Through our communication with Matrouh Governorate, we learned that all the chalets will be removed, even though people bought these chalets from the authorities in the 1980s at prices that were considered high at the time.”, noting that they had not been able to start a community dialogue with the responsible authority to discuss the matter in the first place.
He states: “Now these chalets are worth huge sums, and the government wants to withdraw their ownership for public benefit. We are not against development; on the contrary, we support it, but we want to obtain our rights. People bought these chalets with official contracts, and contracts carry legal value and cannot be bypassed. We want to stress that the chalets we are talking about are chalets that were bought with full ownership contracts from the government and for large sums over many years, starting from 1985 and 1986 until 2000.”
He continues his testimony: “If the chalets are built on usufruct land, the owners pay the governorate annually for this land, and in recent years there have been attempts at reconciliation and the payment of large sums of money to settle the legal status of these chalets, but we have not received clear responses so far. We wonder whether there is an intention to sell this land to foreign investors, and why citizens are being treated in this way. The decision to remove the chalets is causing great anxiety among the owners, especially as they feel that their rights are being ignored, and we demand transparency and clarification of the official position on these decisions.”
In the same context, Sahar Abdel Wahab, one of those affected, says in her conversation with us: “The value of our property now reaches tens of millions. We have full ownership contracts within the Agiba chalets area, and we bought these chalets from the government itself over many years. If it is necessary to withdraw our property for the sake of development, then the government must give us appropriate compensation or real alternatives. We do not want to lose what we have invested in all these years, and we call on the authorities to solve the problem in a just and fair way. We are Egyptian citizens, and we deserve to obtain our rights. Moreover, the Matrouh area is one of the places distinguished by having a special character.”
Mahmoud Mahgoub says: “There was doubt about how official the decision was and whether or not it was a final decision. The governorate built the Agiba chalets in 1986 over an area of 93 square metres, and we bought them at the time for EGP 25,000, an amount that was then equivalent to about five kilograms of gold. When we began to take ownership of the chalets, we discovered that no subdivision decision had yet been issued for the land. In 2020, the governor issued a decision raising the usufruct fee from EGP 120 to EGP 183,350 a year. Then came removal decisions for the chalets built since 2000 whose status had been regularised, which angered us, and we went to the Technical Inspection Agency for Construction Works affiliated with the Ministry of Housing, which is responsible for monitoring removal decisions, and asked for these decisions to be halted until the situation had been examined.”
He goes on: “We were surprised to find that all these measures were preparatory steps to drive us out of the place in order to seize it. We do not know whether these decisions are in the public interest or in the interest of investors. We have chalets and memories going back more than 25 years, and we do not understand the reason for removing them instead of developing the empty areas that lie between Agiba and Salloum.”
“We are ready to pay the costs of development, whether a water desalination plant or sewage treatment, and we are ready to pay sums of up to EGP 1 million or even EGP 2 million per chalet. We want to help the authorities develop this area, but without being expelled from the place we love and live in. There are many alternatives that could be invested in instead of expropriating the chalets. We do not reject development; we only ask to keep our homes and to contribute to improving them, without being excluded or expelled.”, says Mahgoub.
While a number of citizens gave their testimonies on the matter, agreeing on the possibility of reaching an understanding with the authorities to resolve it if appropriate compensation were paid to them, Sara El-Wakil addresses the way in which successive authorities have treated the people of that area. She says: “We bought the chalet three times from the government. The first time was in the 1980s, when we bought it for about EGP 28,000, and the price of a gram of gold at the time was EGP 3, which means that the chalet’s price was equivalent to about nine and a half kilograms of gold. The chalets had no utilities, no water and no electricity, so we ourselves built a water network and set up an association to install an electricity network, and each chalet built its own road and water tank.”
According to her, officials in 2000 accused the residents/owners of building without a permit. She adds: “We only built to provide water and electricity. We bought from Governor Samir Youssef, and paid another EGP 30,000, and the price of gold at the time was EGP 60 per gram, which means that we also added about three kilograms of gold to the first price.”
She continues: “In 2020, they told us that we had built without a permit, while it was the government that did the building in the first place, so how can we be without a permit? They then told us that we had to reconcile with the New Urban Communities Authority, and we paid EGP 2,000 per metre; some paid EGP 100,000, while others paid 25% as a reconciliation good-faith deposit.”
She adds: “My contract dates from 1982, and under it I have a usufruct right to the land for EGP 120 a year, but the government raised the value of the land usufruct to about EGP 183,350, for a chalet whose price was only EGP 28,000. This required us to file a lawsuit that lasted three years, and in the end the ruling was in our favour, returning to the old usufruct, but the surprise was that the authorities decided to expropriate our property, and 96 contracts of chalet owners dating from 2000 onwards were cancelled.”
Those affected are appealing to officials to halt these decisions and review them in a way that guarantees their rights, and they expect the government to issue statements clarifying the ambiguity surrounding the area and the decisions that the responsible authorities took without consulting residents as part of a negotiation process.
Editorial clarification: EGP 30,000, at EGP 60 per gram of gold, is equivalent to about half a kilogram of gold, not three kilograms as stated in the source’s remarks.
