Universal Periodic Review: International Criticism and Concerns over Egypt’s Human Rights Record

January 2025

Last updated: 31/01/2025

1. International scrutiny and accountability

An 11-year prison sentence for former Senator Bob Menendez

A federal court in New York on Wednesday sentenced former Senator Bob Menendez to 11 years in prison, after he was convicted of accepting bribes that included gold bars and a Mercedes car in exchange for facilitating interests linked to Egypt and Qatar. The court also sentenced Egyptian-American businessman Wael Hana to 8 years in prison, and American businessman of Lebanese origin Fred Daibes to 7 years in prison, for their roles in the case.

The prosecution had sought a sentence of up to 15 years for Menendez, accusing him of exploiting his position as senator for the state of New Jersey and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and of turning it into a platform for personal gain.

According to NBC, Menendez rejected all the charges and announced his intention to appeal the verdict. He also maintained that the gold bars found in his home in the state of New Jersey, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, belong to his wife, Nadine Arslanian, on whom the court has not yet issued its ruling.

According to the indictment, Menendez faced 16 charges, among them accepting bribes on behalf of Egypt, extortion under colour of official right, fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. The investigations revealed that Menendez held meetings with officials of Egyptian intelligence and helped Egypt obtain military aid, in addition to providing legal and commercial support to businessman Wael Hana, who also faces charges related to bribery and unlawful dealings with a foreign government.

Despite his conviction, Menendez continues to deny the charges, insisting that all his actions were within the framework of his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Egypt before the United Nations: international criticism and government responses

Last Tuesday, Egypt underwent the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the United Nations Human Rights Council, for the fourth time in its history, after previous reviews in 2010, 2014 and 2019. During the session, Cairo faced wide-ranging criticism from several states and international organisations, focused on the repression of the opposition, prison conditions, restrictions on civil society and enforced disappearance, alongside demands to abolish the death penalty and improve the conditions of refugees.

During the session, the British Ambassador to the United Nations, Simon Manley, criticised the continued arbitrary arrest of journalists and activists, and described the continued imprisonment of activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, despite the expiry of his sentence, as “unacceptable”. Sweden’s Deputy Permanent Representative, Fredrik Nivaus, also expressed his country’s concern about what he described as “the tightening of the noose on civil society”, calling for an end to the restrictions of travel bans and asset freezes.

For their part, several states criticised what is known as “recycling”, the practice in which prisoners are detained on new charges immediately after their prison terms end, leading to their detention for indefinite periods without a new fair trial.

Rights report: a continuing deterioration in rights and freedoms

Before the 48th session of the Universal Periodic Review convened, 11 Egyptian human rights organisations submitted a joint report in which they affirmed that the human rights situation in Egypt is getting worse, noting that the government did not respond sincerely to the recommendations of the previous periodic review in 2019, which led to the aggravation of the political, economic and social crises.

The report considered that the 2024 presidential election was neither free nor fair, and held that closing the public sphere to the opposition amid a crushing economic crisis increases the intensity of political and social tension. The report also pointed to the continuation of death sentences despite previous UN recommendations to reduce them, stressing that Egyptian legislation still permits the death penalty for 105 crimes under the penal, military justice and anti-narcotics laws.

Executions on the rise despite international commitments

According to data from human rights organisations, Egypt has witnessed a marked increase in the carrying out of death sentences in recent years:

• 2020: 126 death sentences carried out, among them 25 defendants in political violence cases.

• 2021: Egypt topped the list of countries issuing the most death sentences, and the sentence was carried out against 84 people.

• 2022: 538 death sentences issued, and 39 sentences upheld by the Court of Cassation and military appeals.

• 2023: 590 death sentences issued, among them military rulings against civilians, as the trial of civilians before military courts continues despite United Nations recommendations to end it.

Enforced disappearance and torture

The report accused the Egyptian authorities of continuing the practice of enforced disappearance, noting that during the period between August 2022 and August 2023, 821 new cases of disappearance were documented, bringing the total number of documented cases since 2015 to 4,253. Although Egypt received seven UN recommendations in 2019 on ending enforced disappearance, the government complied with only three of them.

The report also recorded an increase in prisoners’ hunger strikes and suicide attempts inside prisons because of ill-treatment. In 2021, some inmates of the Tora maximum security prison attempted suicide, and blogger Mohamed Ibrahim (Oxygen) attempted suicide in the same prison. Meanwhile, in 2023 human rights organisations received leaked letters from political prisoners confirming an escalation in suicide attempts among detainees because of the poor conditions inside the prisons.

Criticism of new laws expanding the powers of the army

The rights report criticised the Egyptian parliament’s passing of the law on securing vital facilities (Law 3 of 2024), considering that it expands the army’s powers to arrest civilians and try them before military courts, and places some economic crimes, such as monopoly and the manipulation of the prices of subsidised goods, under military jurisdiction. The report also accused the government of exploiting the war on terrorism since 2013 as a pretext for passing repressive legislation.

Freedom of expression under siege

In 2019, Egypt received 29 UN recommendations to guarantee freedom of opinion and expression, of which it accepted 18. However, the rights report accuses the Egyptian authorities of continuing to violate these rights through the use of the Protest Law (107 of 2013) and the Assembly Law (10 of 1914). It also noted that parliament repealed the Assembly Law in 1928, but that it is still used to suppress protests, which raises questions about the transparency of the legislative process in Egypt.

The Egyptian government responds

In response, the head of the Egyptian delegation, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, rejected the criticism directed at Egypt, affirming that over the past five years the government has committed to implementing the recommendations it accepted from the previous review, within the framework of a national strategy to strengthen human rights, and not in response to any external pressure.

Abdelatty reviewed several steps that the government said it had taken to improve its human rights record, including:

• Lifting the state of emergency in 2021.

• Activating the Presidential Pardon Committee to release political prisoners.

• Launching the National Dialogue initiative to broaden political participation.

• Passing new legal amendments, such as the draft Criminal Procedure Law and the NGO Law, and closing the foreign funding case.

• Strengthening freedom of belief through protecting places of worship and renewing religious discourse.

The United Nations is expected to issue a final report on the review of Egypt’s human rights record in the coming months, which will determine the extent of Cairo’s compliance with previous UN recommendations, amid demands from human rights groups for more effective measures to stop violations and guarantee fundamental freedoms.

Last October, the Egyptian government submitted its national report to the mechanism of the international Human Rights Council, to which Egypt is being subjected for the fourth time since the first review in 2010. Amr Abdelrahman, director of the civil liberties unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in statements to Zawia3, describes the report as a parallel reality, since the Universal Periodic Review is supposed to discuss the state’s obligations under conventions it has signed, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the CEDAW convention against discrimination and the Convention on the Rights of the Child; instead, however, the Egyptian government places development efforts and spending on education, health, infrastructure and subsidies in the report. He adds that the government had bound itself to pledges within conventions it signed but has not honoured them, most notably Article 19 of the International Covenant, concerning the citizen’s right to access information and to express his opinion; yet it has not passed a freedom of information law to date, and there are still journalists and writers being imprisoned because of their opinions.

The director of the civil liberties unit points out that the government’s report contained fallacies: it mentions cases of prisoners being released without clarifying the mechanism for releasing detainees, and cites the protests against the aggression on Gaza as evidence of freedom of protest, despite there being detainees held over their participation in them. He adds that in the 2019 review Egypt pledged to implement about 70% of the recommendations, most notably amending the terrorism law, amending the personal status law so as to guarantee women’s rights, amending the law regulating the media to guarantee that no restrictions are imposed on media outlets, and passing laws on freedom of information and on combating discrimination; however, those pledges were not implemented on the ground, and what happened was a slight improvement in the file of releasing detainees, despite others being arrested, as well as a slight improvement in wages after the minimum wage was approved, but inflation swallowed it. He notes that the drafts of the criminal procedure, labour and personal status bills are worse than the laws that preceded them.

Human rights lawyer Malek Adly, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, explains to Zawia3 that the Universal Periodic Review of human rights is a necessary mechanism, but that this time it comes in a bad international and regional context, as most of the states that lead the banner of defending rights and freedoms in the world have breached their commitments on the question of Palestine, which opens the door to human rights one-upmanship between states. He stresses that human rights organisations in Egypt have played their role of monitoring and presenting violations, most notably the absence of freedom of expression and the systematic use of pretrial detention, at a time when political and social conditions are worsening, and expresses the hope that those efforts will be crowned with success.

Egypt’s 2024 presidential election: accusations of restrictions on competitors

In the context of the human rights review, human rights organisations considered that Egypt’s 2024 presidential election took place in a political climate that witnessed the arrest of a number of political competitors, in addition to the prosecution of journalists and activists. The reports stated that the authorities targeted candidate Ahmed Tantawi, with 194 members of his campaign detained and a number of his supporters added to case No. (16336 of 2023), known as the “popular endorsements case”, which included Tantawi and his campaign manager Mohamed Abu El-Diyar.

On 6 February 2024, the Matariya Misdemeanour Court issued a ruling sentencing Tantawi and Abu El-Diyar to one year in prison, and on 27 May the Appeals Court upheld the ruling, and the sentence was carried out against Tantawi as soon as the decision was issued.

Media freedom: continuing restriction and expanding blocking

The rights report pointed to the continuing decline in press freedom, documenting the detention or arrest of at least 32 journalists during the period from 2019 until the end of 2023, in addition to the continued detention of others and pressure on their families. The report also stated that about 630 websites, among them news websites and human rights platforms, have been blocked since 2017.

The report also noted that the executive regulations of the Law Regulating the Press and Media (No. 180 of 2018), issued on 16 February 2020, imposed strict administrative procedures on journalists and media outlets, under which establishing or operating any website inside or outside Egypt is prohibited without a licence from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, which also holds broad powers to block websites without recourse to the judiciary, according to the text of the law.

Targeting beyond the borders and restrictions on human rights defenders

The report stated that in the three previous cycles of the Universal Periodic Review, Egypt received 31 UN recommendations calling for lifting restrictions on the work of human rights defenders and guaranteeing that they are not prosecuted or targeted with reprisals. However, the NGO Law (No. 149 of 2019) granted the authorities broad powers to supervise the work of non-governmental organisations, including interfering in the formation of their boards of directors and controlling their activities and funding, in addition to banning opinion polls and field studies without prior approval.

The report also pointed to the use of counter-terrorism laws to prosecute human rights defenders inside Egypt, in addition to the continuing pressure on Egyptian activists abroad. The report documented cases in which political dissidents and human rights defenders living outside Egypt were denied the renewal of their official documents, which affected their ability to travel, work and maintain legal residence, in addition to depriving them of basic medical and educational services.

The world sees the truth despite attempts at embellishment

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights called on the government to abandon attempts at propaganda and denial, and to acknowledge the human rights crisis instead of promoting paper strategies that do not reflect reality.

In a recommendations report it published today, 31 January, the Initiative stressed the need for the immediate release of political detainees and prisoners of conscience, and for an end to the practices of “recycling” used to prolong periods of arbitrary detention. It also demanded an end to torture and enforced disappearance, and accession to the international protocols that guarantee the monitoring of prison conditions.

The recommendations pointed to the importance of the independence of the judiciary and of guaranteeing the integrity of trials away from security interference, along with amending the laws restricting freedom of the press and civil society, and stopping the use of terrorism laws as a tool to suppress opponents.

On the file of fundamental rights, the Initiative called for the issuance of a comprehensive law to combat violence against women and the reform of personal status laws to guarantee equality, in addition to suspending the implementation of the death penalty in preparation for its abolition. It also stressed the need to protect the rights of refugees and to stop returning them forcibly in violation of international charters.

Regarding economic and social rights, the Initiative affirmed that improving citizens’ standard of living must be a priority, with increased spending on health, education and social security. It also criticised the weak independence of the National Council for Human Rights, calling for it to be reformed so that it can perform its oversight role effectively.

The Initiative concluded its commentary by affirming that “improving Egypt’s image internationally will only be achieved by changing the human rights reality”, considering that the government’s commitments under the National Human Rights Strategy must be translated into real measures, and not merely promises without implementation.

For a report Zawia3 published on the subject: Egyptian embassies impose new arbitrary restrictions on residents abroad

2. Sinai and displacement

North Sinai

Since the start of the armed conflict between the security forces and the Sinai Province group between 2014 and 2021, the number of civilian casualties in North Sinai has reached 1,836 people killed and 2,915 injured. In 2020, 9 civilians were killed by the security forces, and at least 7 in 2021. The military operations launched by the security forces involved collective punishment against the residents of North Sinai’s towns, including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial killing and the forced displacement of thousands of residents, in addition to the demolition of thousands of homes and the bulldozing of farmland. Since mid-2015, some tribes loyal to the armed forces in Sinai began forming militias to support the authorities in their war on the Sinai Province group, and since July 2020 the Egyptian army began regularly arming and militarily training some of these pro-government militias, according to the report.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights documented the destruction and closure by the armed forces of 21 health facilities during clashes with armed groups. Between 2013 and 2022, the army in the North Sinai region was involved in recruiting children no older than 12, which most likely constitutes a war crime, and it assigned child recruits (aged between 15 and 18) missions confronting members of the Sinai Province group, who pursued those children and later killed them.

Displacement of residents

The report accuses the authorities of adopting policies that undermine the Nubians’ return to their lands, and it set a timeframe for this ending in 2024, starting with Presidential Decree 444 of 2014, which deemed the lands of 16 Nubian villages military border lands in which civilians may not live or which they may not benefit from, followed by presidential decrees 355 and 498 of 2016, which ratified the confiscation of much Nubian land for the benefit of the one and a half million feddan reclamation project.

The Egyptian Commission monitored the continued demolition of homes and the use of excessive force to evacuate residents from the Egyptian city of Rafah in order to complete the establishment of the buffer zone on the Egyptian-Palestinian border, and accused the Egyptian army in North Sinai of deliberately evacuating tens of thousands of residents unlawfully, destroying their homes and farms, as satellite images between 2017 and 2020 showed the demolition of about 4,000 buildings in El-Arish, most of them to build a buffer zone around El-Arish airport, which is used for military purposes.

The Egyptian Commission documented that residents of the El-Gamil suburb west of Port Said were forcibly expelled from their homes, and the Ministry of Interior’s violent handling to suppress the residents’ attempts to hold on to their homes. The government began the evictions in February 2024, completely ignoring the solutions the residents had offered for developing their area. The authorities are working closely to expropriate Warraq Island and forcibly evacuate its residents in order to establish investment projects without fair compensation, in addition to arresting some of the island’s residents during the protests against the eviction.

3. Civil liberties, prisons and pretrial detention

Rights and freedoms

Amnesty International said in a statement that the authorities had embarked on a campaign of repression against peaceful dissent, through arbitrary detentions and politically motivated criminal investigations, noting that in January alone they intensified their targeting of numerous critics: they opened a criminal investigation against human rights defender Hossam Bahgat, while the prominent opposition politician and publisher Hisham Kassem learned that a criminal investigation had been opened against him, and Nada Mogheeth, the wife of detained cartoonist Ashraf Omar, was arrested over an interview she gave to journalist Ahmed Serag, who had been arrested the previous day, 15 January, over the same interview, but she was released on bail of EGP 5,000. TikTok influencer Mohamed Allam, known as Rivaldo, was also arrested over videos criticising the president

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights demanded that the Supreme State Security Prosecution release Ahmed Serag, against whom three charges were brought: joining a terrorist group, financing it, and publishing and spreading false news, and using the Zat Masr website to promote the ideas of this group. The prosecution ordered him held in pretrial detention for 15 days in connection with case No. 7 of 2025.

28 human rights organisations in Egypt issued a statement in which they expressed their concern over the loss of contact with the poet Abdul Rahman Youssef Al-Qaradawi since 8 January 2025, after he was put on board a private plane bound for Abu Dhabi, considering the step a dangerous legal precedent and an illegitimate exploitation of international security agreements to settle political scores with opponents, and calling on the Emirati authorities to immediately disclose the place and conditions of his detention. More than 550 public figures and human rights and party entities had signed a petition demanding his immediate release.

Meanwhile, on 20 January, the Supreme State Security Prosecution began investigating Mohamed Allam, known as “Rivaldo“. The arrest involved a violent raid on his home, as documented by the Egyptian Network for Human Rights. He was charged with publishing false news, joining a group founded in violation of the provisions of the law, and inciting the commission of terrorist acts, and the prosecution ordered him detained for 15 days pending investigations.

On 13 January, the House of Representatives approved the amendments proposed to Article 79 of the draft Criminal Procedure Law, which stipulates: “A member of the Public Prosecution may, after obtaining permission from the summary judge, issue an order to seize all letters, messages, telegrams, newspapers and printed matter, and parcels, and may order the monitoring of wired and wireless communications, accounts on social media sites and applications and their various contents not available to the public, e-mail, and text, audio or video messages on telephones or devices or any other technical means, and the seizure of the media containing them, or the recording of conversations that took place in a private place, whenever this is useful in revealing the truth in a felony or a misdemeanour punishable by imprisonment for a period exceeding three months.”

To read Zawia3’s report on communications surveillance: The communications surveillance law in Egypt: a tool for security or a sword over privacy?

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights criticised the cabinet decision entrenching Military Academy training in teachers’ examinations, considering that the new decision builds on the 2022 amendments, which opened a door to legitimising the unconstitutional interference of the Military Academy in decisions on the appointment of male and female teachers who have passed the legal examinations.

At the same time, eight human rights organisations expressed their concern over the systematic and widespread use of torture and ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, unfair trials and the appalling conditions in places of detention in Egypt.

Prison conditions

The Egyptian Front for Human Rights documented that a number of pretrial detainees at the 10th of Ramadan Reform and Rehabilitation Centre 6 entered a hunger strike that began on 9 January, demanding the release of pretrial detainees, the restoration of the visit duration to a full hour, permission to go out for daily exercise in the sunlight, the opening of an investigation into the violations they are subjected to by the prison administration, and the removal of the National Security officer responsible for the prison.

The wife of political activist Mohamed Adel announced on 2 January his transfer to Al-Asher 4 prison. Over the past 11 years he has been subjected to various forms of deprivation of liberty, whether on the grounds of pretrial detention, or by being placed under police probation for 12 hours a day, or by serving sentences against him on political charges, and by being recycled into more than one case on similar charges.

The Egyptian Network for Human Rights relayed an appeal for help from Karim Abdel Aziz, who was recently released from prison and is serving the probation imposed on him for two years at the Al-Gomrok police station in Alexandria. He accuses an officer of the station’s investigations unit of abusing him and his family and of threatening to fabricate new cases against him and return him to prison if he does not work as an informant for him.

Pretrial detention

The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights announced that the Cairo Criminal Court decided on 21 January 2025 to renew the detention of Mohamed Hamed Abdel Ghaffar for 45 days in connection with case No. 4092 of 2024 State Security, over his writing posts about Palestine on his “Facebook” account.

The Cairo Criminal Court decided on 13 January 2025 to renew for 45 days the detention of Ahmed Hisham Shaheen, known by the nickname “Bahhar”, a member of the Zamalek Club supporters’ association, who has been held in pretrial detention since July 2020, in connection with the well-known case No. 65 of 2021 State Security.

The Cairo Criminal Court renewed on 13 January 2025 the detention of Nourhan El-Sayed Ahmed Darraz for 45 days in connection with case No. 3528 of 2024, because of a post on her “Facebook” account in which she criticised the economic and political situation.

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression monitored, in the period from 12 to 19 January 2025, the renewal of the detention of Al-Bawaba newspaper journalist Karim Ibrahim, held pending investigations in case No. 569 of 2020 (Supreme State Security), and of the deputy head of the Strong Egypt Party, Mohamed El-Kassas, in his third case, No. 786 of 2020 State Security, and the renewal of the detention of Moataz Billah Hasab El-Naby pending investigations over publishing posts on Facebook, thereby exceeding his third year in pretrial detention, as well as the renewal of the detention of the assistant professor at the Faculty of Economic Studies and Political Science at Alexandria University, Ahmed El-Tohamy, pending investigations in case No. 649 of 2020 (Supreme State Security). The Cairo Criminal Court decided to renew the detention of 3 defendants for 45 days pending investigations, namely: journalist Khaled Mamdouh, pending investigations in case No. 1282 of 2024 Supreme State Security, and Mohamed Mahmoud Sabry Ismail, pending investigations in case No. 95 of 2023 Supreme State Security. The Cairo Criminal Court also decided to renew the detention of 3 defendants for 45 days pending investigations, over their posts on social media, namely: Mohamed Youssef Mohamed Ibrahim, pending investigations in case No. 4092 of 2024 Supreme State Security, over their having, and Ehab Helmy Amin Hussein, pending investigations in case No. 4092 of 2024 (Supreme State Security), who was arrested at his home on 28 August 2024, and contractor Abdel Rahman Mohamed Alwani, pending investigations in case No. 1635 of 2022 (Supreme State Security).

The Criminal Court renewed the detention of citizen Yasser Shaheen over Facebook posts in which he criticises Egypt’s position on supporting the Palestinian cause, and renewed the detention of Asmaa Zakaria because of Facebook posts about power cuts, and renewed the detention of Mahmoud Abu Sarie for 45 days. The court renewed the detention of Ahmed Abbas for 45 days pending investigations over posts on Facebook comparing the prices of goods and services between 2013 and 2024, while the Criminal Court renewed the detention of Ahmed Orabi, one of those injured in the revolution. The detention of the poet Galal El-Behairy was also renewed, exceeding the maximum period of pretrial detention, in his third case since his arrest because of the lyrics of the song “Balaha” by the singer Ramy Essam.

On 12 January 2025, the Dekernes Misdemeanour Appeals Court decided to release five defendants, over their participation in a protest vigil following the Matariya accident in Dakahlia governorate, on bail of EGP 10,000, and the prosecution appealed the decision, after they were charged with “inciting an assembly whose purpose was assaulting persons and public and private property, influencing public authority officers in the performance of their duties, and carrying stones to disrupt traffic”, in connection with report 7711 of 2024 Matariya misdemeanours, Dakahlia.

For Zawia3’s report on the Matariya events: The Matariya-Port Said accident: development worth billions, and the result is mass funerals

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights said that the Criminal Court (counsel chamber), sitting in the Badr court complex, examined on 21 January 2025 the renewal of the detention of 64 defendants in case No. 1973 Supreme State Security of 2023, and decided to continue their detention for 45 days. It added that the Military Court in Ismailia issued this January a decision to postpone the examination of two cases concerning five civilians accused of violating fishing instructions in Lake Bardawil, within the framework of two separate cases, the first bearing No. 5 of 2025, while the second case bears No. 6 of 2025.

4. Refugee rights

Conditions of refugees

The report of the 11 human rights organisations, within the framework of the periodic human rights review, pointed out that the Egyptian Commission monitored cases of the arrest and detention of refugees from the Chinese Uyghur minority and Afghan minorities, and confronted attempts to deport them or forcibly return them to their countries, in addition to the detention of asylum seekers arriving from conflict zones across the Egyptian border, and the arbitrary arrest of Sudanese, Syrian and other refugees. In 2020, the authorities launched a campaign of arrests of a number of refugees following the killing of a Sudanese child in Cairo, and the detainees faced the threat of deportation and a lack of medical care in unsuitable places of detention. In June 2024, Amnesty International documented a campaign of mass arrests and forced returns of Sudanese refugees, as the Egyptian authorities forcibly deported 800 Sudanese detainees in the first quarter of 2024 without allowing them to apply for asylum, contact the refugee agency or challenge their deportation decisions.

The report stated that the Egyptian Commission documented that many female asylum seekers were subjected to sexual harassment and attempted rape without serious investigations being opened. After the start of the war on Gaza on 7 October 2023, Egypt has received only limited numbers of Palestinian refugees, most of them in need of medical treatment, and the authorities imposed on them something resembling house arrest and prevented them from communicating with the press, in addition to numerous cases of people who were already in Egypt to study, visit or receive treatment and were unable to return because of the war; their residency expired, and their families were not allowed to enter Egypt. Some of them indicated that the Egyptian authorities imposed large sums of money in dollars on them.

For a report Zawia3 published on the subject: Between residency restrictions and difficulties leaving: has Egypt become less welcoming to Syrians?

Meanwhile, the Migration and Human Rights Platform and the Refugees Platform in Egypt submitted a joint report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, highlighting the challenges and violations committed against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Egypt between 2019 and 2024.

In a related context, the Refugees Platform in Egypt criticised the exclusion of civil society and refugee communities from discussions of the draft law regulating the status of refugees, which the Egyptian authorities announced on 7 June 2023, noting that Egypt lacks comprehensive legislation to regulate refugee affairs. The Platform also stated that the authorities arrested the Syrian media activist Laith Fares Al-Zoubi after raiding his apartment in the Hurghada area, and have prevented him from contacting his family since his detention, after he appeared on 22 December last in a video documenting an interview he conducted with the Syrian consul in Cairo, Bashar Al-Asaad. A circular issued by the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority to airlines and their agents operating in Egypt had circulated, stipulating that Syrian passengers coming to the country not be allowed to board planes bound for Egypt without first obtaining an entry visa issued by Egyptian embassies abroad.

For his part, Nour Khalil, a human rights activist on migration and refugee rights issues and director of the Refugees Platform in Egypt, revealed that arrests and detentions of African refugees had taken place across the country on a scale not seen before, among them women and children, days before Egypt’s session in the Universal Periodic Review. He noted, in a post, that most of the Sudanese refugees reported in recent days had been deported, and that the detention rooms of police stations in Upper Egypt, Greater Cairo and Alexandria were filled with refugees, without recognition of those who hold a card from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

On another front, the Bulgarian foundation Mission Wings revealed that three Egyptian children died on 6 January during a regular migration journey on the Turkish-Bulgarian border, accusing the Bulgarian authorities of obstructing the rescuers’ attempt to reach the site of the incident.

5. Workers and economic and social rights

Workers’ rights

Workers at the Siouf and El-Nozha drinking water and wastewater plants in Alexandria staged a two-hour protest vigil on 12 January, demanding the implementation of the final court rulings issued in favour of the workers on calculating the differences in special bonuses, stopping the calculation of the special bonus after deducting the 7% (“the value of the periodic bonus from it”) and then adding it to the total wage without incorporating it into the basic wage, so as to prevent the entrenchment of wage disparity, the disbursement of the 2017 bonus, setting a unified financial regulation for the employees of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Wastewater nationwide, and raising the meal allowance from EGP 200 to EGP 1,000 per month, according to the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, while the management promised to convey the workers’ demands to officials of the holding company.

Workers at the “T&C” garment factory in the Obour industrial zone went on an open-ended strike starting on Thursday 16 January, demanding the application of the minimum wage, an end to deductions exceeding 20% of their salaries, and the provision of suitable transport without its cost being deducted from their salaries, as the management currently deducts EGP 1,000 per month from their wages for transport, despite the factory’s distance from the workers’ residential areas in the Obour industrial zone, as well as raising the value of the daily meal to EGP 1,200 instead of EGP 600, while guaranteeing that it is paid throughout the year without interruption during holidays or the month of Ramadan, and improving working conditions in the laundry, which operates in two shifts, each lasting 12 hours. In a worrying development, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services said that the factory management detained one of the workers and threatened to hand him over to the security forces deployed around the site. The factory management initially ignored the workers’ demands and asked them to return to work without opening any channels for negotiation. However, it later announced that it would take a decision on the question of the increase next Sunday, while stressing that the strike days would not be paid under any circumstances.

The Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Freedoms at the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services had launched a campaign “Towards a fair labour law”, to stress the need to amend the labour law in line with workers’ demands and rights, in response to the new draft labour law that was returned to the House of Representatives after government amendments were introduced to it.

Human rights lawyer and workers’ rights defender Haitham Mohamedein affirms to Zawia3 that the recent unrest and protests by workers are due to the rise in inflation and the insane rise in prices while their wages remain fixed and their purchasing power declines, which has left them unable to provide the basic needs of their families, in addition to a large number of private sector companies and factories not implementing the President’s decision to apply the minimum wage, through various forms of circumventing the decision, such as counting deductions for social insurance, pensions and unions within the total wage set at EGP 6,000. At the same time, the decision gave private sector companies the right to apply to the Ministry of Planning and Manpower to request exemption from applying the decision because of their financial distress, and accordingly many companies submitted applications to the ministry, did not wait for a reply, and considered themselves exempt from the obligation to pay the minimum wage.

He adds that there are widespread violations committed by company managements against workers, in partnership with the government, consisting of pressuring workers to dissuade them from protesting or striking by closing the establishments and giving them open-ended leave. The government and the security forces usually side with businessmen at the expense of the workers, by preventing them from entering the factories and carrying out their work and ending the strike, in violation of Article 375 of the Penal Code, or by dismissing the workers from their jobs, or by arresting workers at their homes and accusing them of assaulting the police or of vandalism, and bargaining with their colleagues to end their strike or protest, as happened with the female and male workers of Samanoud Weaving, who were detained for about 15 days and dismissed from their jobs. He points to the arrest of 25 workers of the “T&C” garment factory in the Obour industrial zone at their homes, saying that some of them were brought before the Public Prosecution and some of them are being held at the Obour Second police station, while the place of detention of the rest has not yet been determined.

Economic and social rights

The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights filed a lawsuit before the Administrative Court in Cairo against the Minister of Interior, the Assistant Minister for Human Rights Affairs, and the director of the Community Protection Sector in Minya governorate, in their official capacities, on behalf of a citizen; the plaintiff had undergone a successful ICSI procedure that resulted in a pregnancy with triplets. However, the arrest of her husband in January 2015 (he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2022) led to her losing her pregnancy as a result of severe psychological pressure. The lawsuit demands the annulment of the administrative authority’s negative decision refusing to allow her to obtain samples and tests from her husband to complete the ICSI procedure at her own expense.

At the end of 2024, the Egyptian Center’s lawyers also succeeded in obtaining two new separate rulings in lawsuit No. 1971 of 2023 and lawsuit No. 1963 of 2023, in favour of a female journalist and a male journalist, obliging Al-Tariq newspaper, published by Al-Safwa Press Company, to compensate them with nearly EGP 250,000 for their arbitrary dismissal, in addition to payment in lieu of the notice period, the balance of leave and the overdue salary owed.

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression reported that the Administrative Court decided to refer the appeal filed by Dr Manar El-Tantawy, in lawsuit No. 73299 of judicial year 77, to the 18th circuit, as the body that issued the unimplemented ruling, within the framework of the ongoing legal dispute over her entitlement to obtain the rank of professor, because she is the wife of former detainee Hisham Gaafar.

6. Minority rights

Minorities and marginalised groups

The report of the human rights organisations, within the framework of the Universal Periodic Review of human rights, explained that the Egyptian authorities still resort to customary reconciliation sessions as an alternative to the formal justice system in incidents of sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims, as a gateway to escaping the application of the law, and sometimes to forced displacement, while ignoring sectarian attacks and incitement to hatred and preventing the root causes of these problems from being addressed and the necessary legislation from being enacted to confront religious hate speech. It cited the events in the village of El-Fawakher in Minya governorate, which resulted in the burning of the homes of some Christians, on 23 April 2024, and the village of El-Khayari in Minya on 5 September 2023, which witnessed the burning of a Copt’s home and the looting of building materials on the pretext that they were for a church the Copts were building without a licence.

The report showed that since the issuance of Law 80 of 2016 on the construction and restoration of churches, no official decisions have been issued to build new churches other than 50 churches in the new cities, which prompted some organisations to call for a reconsideration of the church construction law, because it did not definitively resolve the legal and procedural difficulties, and for the issuance of a unified law for the construction of places of worship.

It also explains that Shia Muslims are subjected to prosecution and arrest on charges of disturbing social peace and undermining public security, on the pretext of a link between them and Iran. In February 2020, the Administrative Court issued its ruling accepting a lawsuit to close and halt the broadcasting of Shia websites and channels. The current constitution also recognises only Islam, Christianity and Judaism, while a (-) is placed in the religion field on the identity cards of Baha’is. Baha’is are also obliged to practise their religious rites in their homes following the abolition of the Baha’i assemblies in 1950, and Baha’i parents and guardians are forced to sign a declaration stating that “their children have no objection to being examined in the subject of Islamic or Christian religious education in public schools”.

The report also explains that Egypt has previously rejected recommendations to combat discrimination against lesbians and gay men, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (the LGBTQ+ community). Although Egyptian law does not explicitly criminalise consensual same-sex relations, the government uses the Anti-Prostitution Law (10 of 1961) to prosecute members of the LGBTQ+ community, with a penalty of up to three years’ imprisonment, and also uses Articles 279 and 278 of the Penal Code for the same purpose. It shows that the government arrests members of the LGBTQ+ community, who are held in inhumane conditions. Over the past five years, the organisations recorded 21 cases and the arrest of 25 people. Prison sentences of one year or more were issued in 6 of these cases, of less than one year in one case, and acquittals in two cases. Detainees from the LGBTQ+ community (whether trans women or gay men) are subjected to a serious violation of their rights. In 2023, 28 people were subjected to forced anal examinations conducted by the Forensic Medicine Authority despite the objection of human rights organisations, and the authorities use digital platforms and dating websites and applications to track, target and arrest members of the LGBTQ+ community. Human Rights Watch documented 29 cases of arrest and prosecution in September 2023 alone.

7. Political participation and freedom of expression

Anniversary of the January Revolution

Coinciding with the fourteenth anniversary of the 25 January Revolution, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights launched an online blogging campaign on 24 January, demanding the disclosure of the fate of political activist Mostafa El-Naggar, who has been forcibly disappeared since 28 September 2018, affirming that the continuation of this crime constitutes a grave violation of Egyptian and international law and reflects the direct involvement of state agencies in the systematic enforced disappearance of Egyptian citizens, and demanding the immediate disclosure of El-Naggar’s place of detention, holding the Egyptian authorities fully responsible for his safety and his life, an end to all forms of enforced disappearance, and the disclosure of the fate of all those forcibly disappeared in Egypt.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights praised the President’s decision granting a presidential pardon to 4,600 convicts on the occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution and Police Day, calling for the expansion of the application of conditional release in a way that takes into account legal and humanitarian conditions.

After the ceasefire agreement in Gaza took effect, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights called on the Egyptian authorities, headed by the Prosecutor General, Counsellor Mohamed Shawky, to immediately release dozens of Egyptian citizens who are still in pretrial detention over cases related to supporting Gaza, numbering about 129 people at least, among them two children, held in connection with ten cases, some of whom have been detained for as long as 15 months, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

8. Women's rights

In the context of the review of Egypt’s human rights file within the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review mechanism, a group of organisations and initiatives concerned with women’s rights in Egypt submitted a compiled report on the situation of the rights of women and girls in Egypt in the period between 2019 and 2024.

The report explains that the government received 82 recommendations on women’s rights during the 2019 periodic review, accepting 70 of them, while it rejected all the recommendations related to lifting reservations on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to criminalising marital rape. Although some recommendations related to amending the personal status law and combating domestic violence were accepted, no law has been issued in this regard, and Article 17 of the Penal Code, concerning the reduction of sentences on grounds of clemency, continues to be used to lighten the punishment of perpetrators in crimes of violence against women, especially crimes of rape and indecent assault and so-called “honour crimes“. It points to the use of Article 60 of the same law to justify marital and domestic violence. 1,006 crimes of violence against women and girls were documented in 2022, and 950 cases in 2023.

Mai Saleh, director of the Women, Work and Economic Rights programme at the New Woman Foundation and a gender and institutional support consultant, explains to Zawia3 that more than 370 observations were directed at Egypt during the previous review, some of which were accepted fully and some partially, and that women’s rights organisations decided in this review to submit a parallel report. The New Woman Foundation also published a new additional report, and the two reports included the view of the rights organisations defending women on violence against women: Convention No. 190 on violence in the world of work has not been ratified; the labour law excludes female agricultural workers from legal protection; the scandal of the 30,000 male and female teachers competition and the militarisation of jobs; the abuse against female social pioneers; the failure of the features of the new personal status law to emerge; the problems of guardianship and custody in the law; the weak political participation of women; the human rights situation; and the reality of women’s economic empowerment, which contradicts the austerity policies the government pursues and whose consequences it throws onto women, particularly amid the shrinking of social protection and public spending in favour of debt repayment. She shows that while the government sees reliance on small and medium enterprises as a way to empower women, the institutions supporting women’s rights stress the need to resort to the cooperative solidarity economy, achieve self-sufficiency and provide sustainable jobs instead of relying on borrowing, and she calls on the authorities to reconsider these files in order to address the weak points and find solutions to them.

In a related context, the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance expressed its full solidarity with university professor Laila Soueif in her ongoing battle (her hunger strike has exceeded 120 days, demanding the release of her son Alaa Abdel Fattah), calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

Coinciding with the decision of the South Giza Plenary Prosecution to detain 3 defendants for 4 days pending investigations into the case of a girl held inside a dark room for 6 years in the town of Badrashin, the Barah Aman initiative, which supports women’s rights, launched a campaign “I was subjected to house confinement” and launched the hashtag “Freedom for the women detained inside Egyptian homes”, to shed light on the issue of confining women, which counts among the forms of domestic violence, demanding a law to protect women from it. Meanwhile, the Edraak Foundation for Development and Equality affirmed that this is not the first case of its kind, as many similar cases preceded it: in the first half of 2024, 5 cases of forcible confinement were recorded, and the confinement is usually accompanied by continuous beating and torture that may reach the point of killing or drive the victims to suicide.

Feminist writer Shaimaa Tantawi, one of the founders of the Barah Aman initiative, tells Zawia3 that there are no estimates of the scale of cases of house confinement of women in Egypt, but that the initiative, which was launched in 2015, issues monitoring reports on cases of domestic violence, covering the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim, age groups, the governorates with the highest rates of violence and the extent of their connection to economic and social conditions, based on what is published in newspapers about domestic violence crimes, killings and incidents related to personal status, and provides psychological support to survivors and legal consultations to them. She notes that when the campaign was launched 10 years ago it received around a thousand testimonies from victims of house confinement, and calls for the passing of the unified law on violence to protect women, given the absence of a law protecting them from domestic violence and the lack of any article in the law criminalising house confinement.