Since 2011, Egyptian civil society organisations have faced an escalating wave of restrictions and arbitrary measures. Their severity and methods have varied, but rights organisations describe a common effect: reducing independent organisations’ role and influence in public life.
Pressure intensified through the foreign-funding case, No. 173 of 2011, whose repercussions lasted around 13 years. Human rights defenders faced travel bans, frozen bank assets and, in some cases, detention during investigations. The Arabic article initially gives 2013; the case’s documented year is 2011.
In March 2024, the investigating judge decided there were no grounds to bring criminal proceedings against the remaining five rights organisations and lifted related travel bans and asset freezes.
Closing the foreign-funding case did not end the pressure. Organisations say administrative and security obstacles now prevent licensed institutions from carrying out their work.
Restrictions extended beyond criminal proceedings to refusals or delays in the permissions needed for projects. Organisations that complied with the legal framework still struggled to continue services and defend rights amid opaque administrative controls.
During the preceding two years, a number of associations and foundations registered under the 2019 law regulating civil society work. Rights advocates criticise its extensive restrictions. Nevertheless, organisations sought formal compliance to continue operating and avoid prosecution.
Zawia3’s reporting found that these efforts encountered delayed bank-account activation, demands for advance permissions and projects refused or stalled without clear explanations. Such obstacles restricted organisations’ capacity to provide community and rights services.
Obstacles from the outset
Law No. 149 of 2019 requires organisations to register with the Social Solidarity Ministry and submit specified documents. The statute establishes notification procedures and a period of 60 working days for a reasoned objection concerning unlawful activities or deficient information. This distinction matters: the formal notification framework and how authorities implement it are not necessarily the same.
Mohamed Abdel-Salam, executive director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE), says it registered as a civil foundation in July 2023, then faced a prolonged delay activating its bank account.
“This was our first major obstacle. We had official documents and ministry approval, but private banks refused,” he tells Zawia3. Banks repeatedly asked about funding sources, activities and management. Submitted documents were requested again in different forms.
One bank demanded that the ministry’s letter explicitly state that activating the account did not require a fundraising licence. Abdel-Salam questioned the connection between activating a foundation’s account and rules governing charitable fundraising.
A bank employee indirectly indicated that activation required outside approval, not just a management decision. AFTE understood this as possible security or executive interference, rather than a confirmed identification of the body responsible.
Following correspondence, contacts and intervention by public figures, the account was activated. Abdel-Salam describes an 11-month wait. The Arabic source also gives July 2023 for registration and May 2025 for activation, dates that span approximately 22 months; the discrepancy cannot be resolved from the published account and the reported duration should be read with that qualification.
Registration under the 2019 law is mandatory even for previously registered organisations, with dissolution a possible consequence of non-compliance. Amnesty International reported that some organisations complied for protection or funding eligibility, while others felt compelled by penalties. It had no information that an organisation had actually been dissolved for non-registration. Some law-firm or non-profit-company structures declined to register. Amnesty argues that freedom of association must protect registered and unregistered groups alike.
The same report describes bank-account delays of three to 15 months in documented cases, linked to administrative letters and, sometimes, separate security clearances. These delays obstructed salaries, rent and activities. It also warns that state approval controls over foreign funding expose organisations to suspension or dissolution and staff to financial penalties.
Registered, but unable to fund their work
The law and implementing rules regulate receipt and use of funds. For foreign funding, they require notification, allow the administration a review period and restrict spending during it. Organisations say a mechanism intended to regulate financing becomes a means of delaying activities. Domestic donations and foreign funding are subject to different provisions; they should not be treated as one identical approval procedure.
After activating its account, AFTE encountered further obstacles when submitting a grant for a partner project. “We submitted the contract, budget, activities and internal regulations, but officials refused to receive them and demanded a sub-account before approval,” Abdel-Salam says. He considers that requirement unsupported by the law.
Once the sub-account was opened, officials demanded a ministry inspection, which was then delayed on grounds of staff shortages. He says discussions escalated to threats of informing State Security that the organisation was troublesome. The inspection eventually took place, and the grant papers were received at the end of July after about two months of attempts.
Repeated, unexplained requests for additional documents followed. A second grant submitted in August encountered the same process. After documents were delivered to the ministry in October, AFTE received a written Cairo Social Solidarity Directorate opinion that it had no objection to either grant because the foundation complied with the law and its bylaws. Yet at the end of November, the ministry refused both grants without reasons, Abdel-Salam says.
“Since obtaining our licence two and a half years ago, we have received no money to finance our activities,” Abdel-Salam says. AFTE continued covering premises and basic costs itself despite a team of around 16 people.
The foundation lodged an administrative grievance, describing the refusal as unreasoned and arbitrary. Abdel-Salam characterises the obstacles as security interference and unlawful procedures that deny licensed organisations access to funding.
The 60-day trap
Sherif Gamal, executive director of the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA), says administrative interpretation empties the statutory review period of meaning.
Project papers first go to the local administration, then the directorate and finally the ministry. According to Gamal, officials count the 60 working days from arrival at the ministry, rather than the organisation’s dated submission receipt. Organisations do not know when that internal transfer occurred.
“Sometimes, four or five months later, we are told the project has not yet reached the ministry. Other times it arrives within days or a week,” he says. Each administrative level can delay a file for review or further waiting.
The second obstacle is restarting the clock whenever the ministry asks a question: the period begins again after the reply arrives. Queries can concern details already supplied, such as a donor’s nationality or address, or arise from administrative mistakes such as mixing two projects’ papers. Organisations must then rearrange and resubmit them.
Gamal says waits can stretch from several months to a year. Projects expected to be decided within 60 days are not actually resolved within that period.
CEWLA depends on project financing. Delayed approvals undermine stability, threaten jobs and drive skilled staff away. Projects are sometimes refused without reasons even when the donor has previously been approved and the nature of the work has not changed.
Unexplained refusals undermine the organisation’s ability to challenge decisions or correct mistakes; grievances frequently receive no response, he says.
The consequences reach women receiving free legal, psychological and social support, including low-income women, survivors of violence, divorcees and widows. Services include litigation, advice, identity documents and access to social protection.
Interrupted projects can leave women in violent environments and, in some cases, threaten their lives, Gamal says. Restrictions also affect awareness-raising and policy work. He cites CEWLA’s Bahariya Oasis activities, begun in 2021–2022 with government coordination, whose continuation is threatened by rejection of new projects.
Independent organisations are not enemies of the state, he argues. They need genuine space and a hearing as partners offering problems and solutions, rather than institutions to silence.
Human rights lawyer Negad El-Borai distinguishes registration from project approval. In his experience, establishment generally proceeds quickly and is not the core problem. He has encountered at least two organisations whose projects were rejected, within a wider recurring pattern.
The law provides for a ministry grievance and an appeal to the State Council, he explains. Yet refusal decisions often contain no reasons. “Even those of us working in the field do not know why it was refused, so we cannot know how to avoid the reason next time.”
El-Borai considers failure to give reasons unlawful and damaging to administrative and judicial remedies. He sees it as a central feature of the civil society crisis since roughly 2013.
Foreign grants are essential, he says. Local donations face limited tax incentives and a culture favouring traditional charitable causes—religious buildings and hospitals—over rights, cultural and artistic work. If foreign funding also becomes inaccessible, organisations can be paralysed without any formal closure order.
An organisation can remain legally open yet be unable to work if every route to financing is blocked, El-Borai argues.
Funding is therefore a question of survival, especially in fields that receive little domestic charitable support.
Civil society loses its people
Nevine Ebeid, chair of the New Woman Foundation’s board of trustees, says the obstacles accumulate from the beginning, including donor access and interactions with national oversight bodies.
She links a decline in international grants to the rise of conservative right-wing currents in some donor countries and a preference among some funders for government plans over independent organisations offering alternatives or critical policy assessments.
Available grants have fallen towards subsistence levels, she says, undermining sustainability, institutional development and long-term planning.
All projects previously implemented by the New Woman Foundation received ministry approval, but the future remains unclear. “We will try and see what happens with new projects. The path is not smooth with donors or grant sizes, and it may not be smooth with national authorities either,” she says.
She hopes current applications will be approved, while describing Egyptian civil society as in a very poor condition. Experienced young people trained in civic work, research and critical writing continue to leave.
Employment opportunities can no longer match rising living costs, particularly for young feminist staff supporting themselves. The resulting loss of people and expertise is difficult to replace.
Ebeid describes a sharp contraction in rights-oriented organisations and space for independent work. If only one interpretation of public policy is heard, citizens lose access to alternatives. In her view, this fuels frustration and leaves people preoccupied with basic survival rather than imagining a different future.
Amnesty’s briefing, “Whatever security says must be done”: Independent NGOs’ freedom of association restricted in Egypt, argues that the 2024 case closure did not remove the 2019 law’s restrictions or National Security interference. It describes controls on registration, activities, funding, boards and cooperation with other entities, reinforced by excessive penalties and broadly framed grounds involving national security, public order or morals. The Arabic article’s last paragraph reverses the point by saying the law prohibits vague refusals; the briefing instead criticises powers enabling restrictive decisions.
The published research describes interviews with 19 people representing 12 organisations. The Arabic article mentions 22 cases, a different figure that should not be treated as the number of organisations interviewed.
The law distinguishes administrative suspension from dissolution ordered by a court. Its provisions on judicial dissolution should not be collapsed into the claim that a ministry can simply dissolve an organisation without a court ruling.
Across the interviews, a complex network of legal, administrative and alleged security restrictions turns everyday rights and service work into a struggle. Formal registration alone does not ensure functioning bank accounts, timely project decisions or access to funding. Without those, organisations’ ability to survive and serve their communities remains severely constrained.
