Violence in Egypt: Economic Strain, Social Fractures and the Search for Protection

A man in his thirties attacks a neighbour in his fifties in Luxor’s Abu al-Goud district, beheads him in the street and walks among passers-by carrying the severed head. The killing horrified Egyptians and spread alarm on social media. It recalled a similar crime in Ismailia in 2021.

For observers interviewed by Zawia3, the succession of violent incidents in January 2025 raises urgent questions about social safety. On the same day as the Luxor killing, a police officer was killed inside a bank in Fayoum. Earlier, a widely circulated video showed a student being assaulted by a fellow pupil at a private school. News outlets also reported that a woman had been freed after six years of confinement in her uncle’s home, where she had allegedly been chained up after asking to separate from her husband.

The incidents differ in location and circumstances, but have fuelled a shared anxiety. Experts interviewed for this report see them as signs of serious social strain. Establishing a nationwide increase in violence is harder: the available figures cover different populations, periods and definitions, and a succession of highly publicised crimes does not by itself establish a statistical trend.

Egypt scored 47.3 on the crime index and 52.7 on the safety index in Numbeo’s 2024 country table. Its methodology is based on website contributors’ perceptions, not recorded offences. A score such as 60.64 for perceived increases in crime must therefore not be described as a 60.64% rise in actual crime.

A different source, the 2015 Economic Cost of Gender-Based Violence Survey, conducted by UNFPA, the National Council for Women and CAPMAS, estimated that around 7.8 million women experienced violence annually. This is an estimate from that survey period, not a new count for 2024. The Egyptian Family Health Survey, published in 2022, also reported that around a third of ever-married women aged 15–49 had experienced a form of violence by their husbands.

The government presents a different picture of recorded crime. In remarks marking the 73rd Police Day, Interior Minister Mahmoud Tawfik said criminal offences had fallen by 14% compared with the previous year.

Several earlier cases remain prominent in public memory. In 2023, a woman in Faqous killed her child; reports about the case included allegations that she cooked and ate parts of his body. The murder of university student Nayera Ashraf outside Mansoura University occurred in 2022. In 2024, the New Cairo serial-killing case, involving three women, and the case of a Tunisian flight attendant accused of killing her daughter generated extensive legal and media debate.

Economic pressure and social strain

Entesar al-Saeed, a Court of Cassation lawyer and chair of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law’s board of trustees, sees several overlapping pressures behind violent behaviour. Inflation, higher prices and unemployment, she tells Zawia3, can intensify frustration and psychological stress.

She argues that poverty, widening social inequalities and inadequate education and healthcare services deepen feelings of injustice. In her assessment, changes in social relationships and declining tolerance can make aggression more acceptable as a form of protest or self-defence.

Al-Saeed also points to the availability of weapons and drugs in some areas. Addressing violence, she says, requires coordinated action across education, the economy, public security and social justice.

Abdel Azim al-Khadrawi, a specialist in psychiatry, neurological conditions and addiction treatment, similarly identifies a combination of pressures: mounting stress, the belief that force is the only way to secure one’s rights, and cultural ideas that equate violence with heroism.

He argues that some films and television series reinforce this model of the hero. He also links certain violent behaviour to substance use, from cannabis to synthetic drugs such as Strox and shabu, whether through their effects or attempts to obtain money to buy them. These are his explanations of possible contributing factors, rather than evidence that every person who uses drugs becomes violent.

Figures about drug use require particular care. Percentages describing the ages at which treatment-seeking patients began using drugs cannot establish prevalence among all young people. The cited material does not provide an adequate basis for saying that 45.1% of all Egyptians aged 15–20, or 34.1% of those aged 20–30, used drugs in 2024.

Poverty is another factor the interviewees emphasise. Historical CAPMAS thresholds sometimes quoted in this debate—EGP 8,827 per person annually for poverty and EGP 5,890 for extreme poverty—belong to the 2017/18 household income and expenditure survey. They should not be treated as current thresholds in 2025.

An explanatory article published by FasterCapital discusses unemployment, substance use, isolation, mental health and economic stress as possible contributors to crime. It is not, by itself, an empirical study demonstrating those relationships in Egypt.

At a discussion held by the American University in Cairo’s Alternative Policy Solutions programme in October 2023, Cairo University statistics professor and CAPMAS adviser Heba El-Laithy presented estimates of rising poverty. The figures cited in this report are 31.4% for 2020/21, 33.3% for 2021/22 and 35.7% for 2022/23, reflecting the effects of the pandemic and subsequent price shocks. These are research estimates, not a newly published CAPMAS household survey.

A World Bank project document dated April 24, 2024 separately cites a national poverty rate of 32.5% for 2022 in the context of a proposed $250 million climate-resilient agriculture project. It is a different source and should not be merged with El-Laithy’s estimates as though they formed one continuous series.

CAPMAS’s labour figures for the fourth quarter of 2023 put unemployment at 6.9%, including 4.6% among men and 17.7% among women in the labour force. The labour force was estimated at 31.101 million, down from 31.956 million in the preceding quarter. These figures describe the labour market; they do not measure how many crimes were caused by unemployment.

Mental illness is not a synonym for violence

The Luxor case prompted renewed discussion of mental health and criminal responsibility. Reporting on January 23, 2025 said the suspect had been referred to a psychiatric centre for assessment. Referral does not establish a final diagnosis or determine legal responsibility, and the cases discussed here do not support a general claim that most offenders have a mental disorder.

Al-Khadrawi stresses that violence is not confined to people with psychiatric conditions. He says a relatively small proportion of violent incidents may involve severe symptoms, such as intense suspicion or agitation, and discusses schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some severe depressive episodes as examples requiring individual assessment.

His discussion includes cases in which a person harms family members as well as themselves. A diagnostic label alone, however, cannot explain an individual act or predict that someone will harm others.

Al-Khadrawi distinguishes these situations from enduring patterns of behaviour shaped by upbringing, social circumstances and life experiences. He describes traits such as limited empathy or remorse as potentially relevant to some acts of violence. Personality disorders remain clinical conditions; they should not be conflated with all antisocial or criminal behaviour.

Findings from the National Mental Health Survey reported in 2018 indicated that around a quarter of those examined had symptoms or a mental health condition. Published summaries identified mood disorders, particularly depression, at 43.7% and substance-use disorders at 30.1% among the affected categories. These figures do not measure criminal behaviour and do not show that people with mental health conditions are generally violent.

Protection requires more than harsher sentences

Hala Douma, a lawyer and legal researcher who heads the Horriya office for legal practice and consultancy, distinguishes violence against women, children and marginalised groups from other criminal offences.

Egypt’s Penal Code and supplementary laws criminalise many forms of violence, she says, but the framework lacks a comprehensive approach to domestic violence. Acts committed within a family may be prosecuted under general offences without fully addressing the particular circumstances of abuse.

Douma notes that some crimes—including harassment, bullying and sexual assaults—can attract aggravated penalties when committed by relatives, people exercising authority or those responsible for a victim’s care. Nevertheless, she believes the overall approach gives insufficient attention to gender and the social conditions that shape violence against women and children.

She welcomes efforts to introduce a unified law combating violence against women, while arguing that the draft must reflect recent legislative amendments and provide protection that works in practice.

Parliament frequently increases penalties, Douma says. She argues that this is insufficient without simpler, more effective ways for survivors to obtain justice.

For Douma, two barriers undermine protection: procedures that women, children and people with limited resources struggle to navigate, and weaknesses in enforcing judgments. Harsher penalties alone cannot remove either obstacle.

Complicated procedures can prevent victims from pursuing their rights, while ineffective enforcement allows perpetrators to escape consequences, she says. In her assessment, these weaknesses diminish the deterrent effect of the law.

Article 11 of Egypt’s constitution commits the state to protecting women from violence. Douma believes this promise has not been translated into sufficiently effective safeguards. She argues that women’s vulnerability is created by gaps in protection, rather than by anything inherent in women themselves.

She questions the practical effect of previous strategies and institutional initiatives intended to support women. Her recommendations include a gender-sensitive legal framework, accessible procedures and stronger enforcement, so that legal rights can be exercised by those most exposed to abuse.

Violence in schools

The assault on Karma at a private school in New Cairo was among January’s most widely discussed incidents. Her family described serious injuries after another student attacked her.

Al-Khadrawi says children’s behaviour can reflect violent treatment at home. Aggression can also persist when adults fail to challenge it or actively encourage it. He places considerable responsibility on families to model dialogue, respect and understanding, while stressing that they cannot address the problem alone.

Government programmes should help parents understand constructive approaches to raising children, he says. Media and the arts can present positive role models and encourage tolerance. He also calls for efforts to reduce harmful substance use and its consequences.

Al-Saeed recommends a combination of prevention and support in schools, covering violence among pupils and between pupils and teachers. Classroom activities, workshops and other programmes should teach respect, empathy and peaceful ways to manage disagreement.

She calls for consistent supervision in classrooms, corridors and playgrounds, together with an environment where pupils can speak openly about their feelings. Safe spaces, including counselling rooms, would allow children who experience or witness violence to approach trained adults.

Teachers need practical training in de-escalation and conflict management, al-Saeed argues, so they can intervene before tension turns into violence.

Digital safety is part of the same task. As children spend more time online, she says, schools should teach responsible behaviour, how to recognise cyberbullying and where to seek help.

Should cinema and television take the blame?

Films and television dramas are often accused of encouraging violence, particularly when aggressive protagonists are presented as powerful or heroic. Film critic and cinema historian Mohamed Samih rejects a simple causal explanation.

He tells Zawia3 that asking whether art creates violence opens a much wider debate. Religion and ideology are also blamed, he notes, but human violence cannot be reduced to a single influence.

Samih points to violence throughout human history, long before cinema. He invokes the story of Cain and Abel and humanity’s use of tools as weapons to argue that aggression did not begin with artistic representations. People differ, he adds, and circumstances can push some towards actions they would otherwise reject.

He believes attacks on art can become a way to avoid confronting psychological and social conditions. Some defend artistic freedom but object whenever a work depicts violence; in his view, art must be able to reflect what happens in the street.

His references to religious narratives and evolutionary struggle are part of his argument about human history, rather than an empirical explanation of any particular crime. He also observes that public debate rarely credits art with helping someone resist violence, even as it readily blames it for aggression.

For the sources interviewed here, the challenge is to understand several interacting pressures without turning any one group—poor people, those with mental health conditions, young people or artists—into a universal explanation.

Their recommendations extend beyond punishment: better education, accessible health and social services, support for people under economic pressure, responses to harmful drug use and practical protection for survivors. They see prevention as a shared responsibility of families, institutions and government.