Just days separated Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s directive to begin preparing a new national human rights strategy—set to take effect after the current one (2021–2026) expires—and the announcement of Egypt’s election to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2026–2028 term. The developments come amid heated debate over the state of rights and freedoms in Egypt, in light of contradictory signals that continue to expose tensions in how the authorities manage this sensitive file.
In mid-October 2025, Egypt secured 173 votes in the Human Rights Council elections—its third time winning a seat, including two terms under President al-Sisi’s rule. The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement, described the victory as proof of the “important progress” achieved in recent years on human rights, highlighting the launch of the National Human Rights Strategy in 2021 and the government’s regular monitoring reports tracking its implementation and measurable outcomes.
The ministry added that the president’s latest directives included not only the preparation of a new national strategy, but also the development of the criminal justice system, the modernization of correctional and rehabilitation centers, the expansion of social protection programs, and the empowerment of women, youth, and persons with disabilities. It also noted that the principles of the National Human Rights Strategy have been integrated into the plans and budgets of several ministries and government agencies, alongside expanded training and capacity-building programs within state institutions.
A Review of the Fourth Report of the National Human Rights Strategy
According to the fourth executive report issued by Egypt’s Permanent Supreme Committee for Human Rights in October 2025, the state recorded more than 50 achievements across various sectors within just one year — between September 2024 and August 2025. These ranged from healthcare, education, and social welfare to political participation and freedom of expression.
The report described these developments as proof of “the political will to continue implementing the strategy launched four years ago,” citing legislative amendments, presidential pardons, and social and development initiatives such as the Decent Life (Hayah Karima) program, in addition to “efforts to empower civil society.”
However, the “positive” image presented by the official report sharply contrasts with findings from Egyptian and international human rights organizations, which document persistent challenges in the field of rights and freedoms — notably, continued restrictions on freedom of expression, prolonged pretrial detention in political cases, and a lack of transparency in implementing certain parts of the strategy.
While the state affirms that it has improved the legislative environment as part of its human rights commitments, many of these legal reforms have drawn criticism from independent rights organizations. For instance, the government hailed the new Criminal Procedure Code as “a qualitative step” toward reducing pretrial detention and ensuring swift justice. Yet, reports signed by rights groups and opposition parties argue that the law includes constitutional and legal violations, even after amendments made during an extraordinary parliamentary session convened at the president’s request.
Although President al-Sisi initially refused to ratify the law and returned it to parliament, the House of Representatives later approved it, despite the continued disagreement over several disputed articles.
The campaign “Towards a Fair Criminal Procedure Law” stated that its position on the amendments reflects “growing concern that the legislation is regressing from the fundamental guarantees of justice rather than strengthening them.” It added that after the parliamentary committee redrafted several articles in response to the president’s comments, its final report “introduced new proposals that were passed by the House in its general session.”
A close reading of the report — according to legal and human rights experts consulted by the campaign — shows that some amendments represent a clear rollback from the guiding principles of the original draft, weakening protections for personal freedoms and limiting the right to defense, which constitutes one of the essential pillars of criminal justice.
Other laws highlighted in the government’s fourth executive report — such as Law No. 164 of 2024 on Asylum and Labor Law No. 14 of 2025 — have also faced widespread legal and political criticism.
Despite the new Labor Law including provisions to regulate worker–employer relations and expanding leave entitlements, rights groups, political parties, and labor researchers argue that it fails to create a fair balance between both sides, continues to restrict trade union freedoms, and provides insufficient protection mechanisms for informal workers, who make up the majority of Egypt’s labor force.
As for the Asylum Law, refugee-rights organizations — including the Refugees Platform in Egypt — contend that it lacks adequate guarantees for refugee and asylum-seeker protection, and fails to enshrine the principle of non-refoulement, thereby violating international conventions ratified by Egypt.
In June 2024, Amnesty International reported that Egyptian authorities had forcibly deported around 800 Sudanese refugees during the first quarter of the year, without granting them access to asylum procedures, legal counsel, or the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Meanwhile, Egypt’s Commission for Rights and Freedoms documented cases of sexual harassment and assault against refugee women, noting that police stations refused to register complaints or refer victims to medical authorities, and in some cases even accused them of prostitution.
Regarding the long-delayed Freedom of Information Law, the draft remains shelved despite repeated calls for its adoption. Rights organizations and the Journalists Syndicate have repeatedly urged the government to issue a law guaranteeing access to information as a cornerstone of transparency, accountability, and anti-corruption efforts, in line with Article 68 of Egypt’s Constitution.
Magdy Abdel Hamid, Executive Director of the EU Project at the National Council for Human Rights, views the president’s directive to prepare a second phase of the National Human Rights Strategy as a “natural and logical step” — an extension of the state’s policy since the strategy’s launch in 2021.
Speaking to Zawia3, Abdel Hamid says the first version of the strategy was “well written in terms of objectives and ideas,” but lacked clear implementation mechanisms, timelines, and performance indicators — what he describes as “the key weakness of the first phase.”
He adds that the National Council for Human Rights has already begun working on a comprehensive framework for the second phase even before the presidential directive was officially issued. The Council, he explains, plans to hold a series of meetings and dialogues over the coming months with civil society actors, human rights organizations, professional associations, and academics to formulate a more practical and measurable action plan that translates broad principles into concrete, assessable programs.
Meanwhile, Halim Henish, human rights lawyer and legal advisor at the Refugees Platform in Egypt, argues that the laws championed by the government — including the still-unratified Criminal Procedure Code, the Labor Law, and the Asylum Law — have faced “widespread criticism not only domestically but also from UN Special Rapporteurs, who believe that these legislative amendments represent a retreat from the basic guarantees of justice and rights that Egypt has pledged to uphold under its international obligations.”
What Has the Strategy Achieved?
When it was launched in 2021, Egypt’s National Human Rights Strategy was built on four main pillars: the first covering civil and political rights, the second addressing economic, social, and cultural rights, the third focusing on the rights of women, children, persons with disabilities, youth, and the elderly, and the fourth dedicated to education and capacity building in the field of human rights.
Although the latest executive report highlighted what it described as “positive steps” in the area of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly under the civil and political rights pillar — such as the cooperation protocol signed between the Ministry of Education and the National Election Authority to promote political awareness, and the organization of peaceful events involving trade union and civil society representatives — human rights reports continue to document restrictions on the right to association and protest, as well as arbitrary detentions of citizens for expressing opinions online, alongside constraints on independent unions and NGOs preventing them from operating freely.
During Egypt’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the UN Human Rights Council on January 28, 2025, 137 countries submitted over 370 recommendations aimed at improving human rights conditions in Egypt. These covered a wide range of issues, including torture practices, the “recycling” of pretrial detainees, political imprisonment, enforced disappearances, and restrictive laws such as the NGO Law, Criminal Procedure Code, and Asylum Law, in addition to prosecutions of journalists and human rights defenders, violations of women’s rights, and declining social spending.
After merging similar recommendations, the final number stood at 343, according to the review’s concluding report. In its official response memorandum, the Egyptian government stated that it had fully accepted 264 recommendations (77%), partially accepted 16 (5%), and “noted” — meaning rejected — 62 (18%), underscoring the ongoing gap between declared commitments and actual implementation of human rights standards.
In this context, Lobna Darwish, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), offers a critical perspective that differs from the government’s narrative of progress. She asserts that “this moment is the most suitable to assess the design of the first strategy — to determine whether it achieved its goals or not.”
Darwish tells Zawia3 that the main problem lies in the fact that the strategy was “born without clearly defined objectives,” relying instead on broad slogans without measurable targets or performance indicators, making evaluation or accountability nearly impossible.
She argues that the strategy was built on an inaccurate premise — namely, that “Egypt’s human rights crisis stems from citizens, not from the government.” The document, she says, focused on weak civic awareness and low participation, while ignoring the restrictions imposed on the public sphere.
Darwish also criticizes what she describes as the transformation of the annual reports issued by the Permanent Supreme Committee for Human Rights into mere catalogues of ministerial and governmental activities, rather than evaluations of actual progress or failure rates in achieving the strategy’s goals.
Innocent Yet Punished: Children of Incarcerated Women in Egypt
A Crisis of Law or of Implementation?
Regarding the right to litigation and fair trial guarantees, the latest executive report pointed to a relative improvement in the performance of the justice system during the period it covered. It stated that 9.2 million cases were presented before primary courts of all types, of which around 8.6 million were adjudicated, according to data from the Ministry of Justice. Yet, legal researchers argue that a higher rate of case resolution does not necessarily reflect better judicial quality or fair trial standards, given that the laws expanding pretrial detention and limiting judicial independence remain in force.
As for the treatment of prisoners and detainees, the report noted that 8,528 inmates were released under conditional parole, in addition to 13,406 others granted presidential pardons on national and religious occasions, between September 2024 and June 2025.
However, human rights organizations stress that these releases do not fundamentally alter prison realities, amid continued prolonged detentions without trial and a lack of transparency about the conditions of detainees in the new correctional complexes, especially Badr Prison.
In January 2025, rights groups condemned decisions by the Supreme State Security Prosecution to refer hundreds of detainees, some held for over six years without trial, to terrorism courts instead of releasing them — a move that, according to these organizations, represents an attempt to cover up serious violations committed during investigations and arbitrary detentions in politically motivated cases.
During the last quarter of 2024, prosecutors referred no fewer than 90 political cases to terrorism courts — an unprecedented figure exceeding the total of similar cases referred over the entire 2013–2023 decade. This, rights groups said, constitutes a clear violation of judicial directives requiring concrete evidence and individualized charges against each defendant.
These cases involve prominent public and human rights figures such as Hoda Abdel Moneim, Ibrahim Metwally, Walid Selim, Ahmed Nazeer El-Helw, and translator Marwa Arafa; businessmen including Mohamed Thabet and Essam El-Sweirky; cleric Anas El-Sultan; politicians Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Mohamed El-Qassas, Jihad El-Haddad, and Anas El-Beltagy; as well as doctors, engineers, and academics working in public research institutions and government agencies.
Halim Henish, human rights lawyer and legal advisor at the Refugees Platform in Egypt, told Zawia3 that the real crisis in Egypt’s human rights situation does not stem from a lack of laws or strategies, but from the absence of political will to enforce existing laws. “Egyptian legislation — especially the current Criminal Procedure Code — already includes provisions sufficient to ensure a minimum level of justice, such as capping pretrial detention,” he explains. “But without genuine intent to implement these laws, they remain meaningless.”
Henish argues that the National Human Rights Strategy, promoted domestically and internationally by the government, is “nothing more than an effort to polish the regime’s image before the international community, without enacting real reforms or tangible progress.” He adds that what the government portrays as “achievements,” such as visits to correctional facilities or legal amendments, lack transparency and substance, since no public reports have been released on the outcomes of these visits, while inmates at Badr Prison have been on hunger strike for over two months, completely isolated from the outside world.
He concludes by emphasizing that genuine reform does not require more laws or cosmetic strategies, but rather a clear political decision from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to uphold the law and release arbitrarily detained prisoners. “Real reform,” Henish asserts, “begins with enforcing what already exists — not by writing new slogans.”
In September 2025, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) released a report titled “Between Propaganda and Reality: Human Rights Violations of Badr Prison Inmates,” marking nearly four years since the complex opened in late 2021.
The report noted the persistent absence of regular official data—whether summary or detailed—on conditions inside the Badr Security Complex, as well as the rarity of announced official visits, which typically limit themselves to generic praise without providing factual details. With independent civil society organizations still barred from conducting prison monitoring visits, EIPR relied on interviews with families, lawyers, and former detainees, in addition to analyzing official government statements and news reports about the complex. The organization compared official narratives with the accounts of detainees, relatives, and legal representatives, and conducted a legal analysis of Egyptian legislation and international detention standards to assess compliance and identify whether certain laws require fundamental amendments to safeguard prisoners’ rights.
EIPR concluded that the available evidence on the current state of Badr Prison clearly indicates the need for a comprehensive review of Egypt’s security and detention policies, as well as independent and serious investigations led by competent judicial bodies. The report proposed a set of immediate, practical measures that authorities could implement without additional funding — provided there is genuine political will to improve detention conditions and guarantee prisoners’ fundamental rights.
The initiative further stressed that the Ministry of Interior’s responsibility does not end with enforcing sentences, but extends to protecting the lives, health, and dignity of prisoners, whether pretrial detainees or those serving custodial sentences, affirming that they remain citizens whose human and legal rights cannot be stripped away.
What the Strategy Needs
According to Lobna Darwish, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), issuing new strategies “is not an achievement in itself” unless they include a clear implementation plan and mechanisms for measurement and accountability. She argues that the absence of such elements renders these strategies closer to public relations documents than to effective public policies. Still, she notes that the past few years have witnessed limited progress, such as women being appointed to judicial positions for the first time in Egypt’s history, though these steps, she says, have been overshadowed by new violations and a continued regression in fundamental rights and freedoms.
In the same context, Susan Nada, a human rights lawyer, asserts that the National Human Rights Strategy has remained largely a formal document — “ink on paper” — because it failed to uphold the very provisions it outlined upon its release, and has not translated into practical measures demonstrating the state’s respect for its human rights commitments.
Nada tells Zawia3 that the exclusion of civil society organizations from drafting legislation and decisions related to rights and freedoms — such as the Criminal Procedure Code — reflects a deliberate disregard for professional and rights-based voices that submitted detailed feedback, describing the law as “unjust” and “restrictive of the right to defense.” She adds that years-long pretrial detention has effectively become a disguised punishment, amid the absence of serious investigations and ineffective mechanisms for monitoring extrajudicial killings.
Nada explains that during the National Dialogue, several human rights organizations presented clear demands, including the establishment of a Commission to Combat Discrimination, a Commission to Prevent Violence Against Women, and the passage of a unified law against gender-based violence. However, she says, none of these proposals were adopted or implemented, while laws continued to pass through parliament without involving or even informing key stakeholders.
She adds that Egypt’s human rights crisis is multilayered, beginning with the absence of political will. “If there were genuine intent to achieve swift justice or reform the rights system, it would have been possible,” she says. The second dimension of the crisis, according to Nada, lies in conflicting legal provisions, as articles in the Penal Code, Anti-Terrorism Law, and Criminal Procedure Code contradict one another — creating confusion in enforcement and opening the door to broad, arbitrary interpretations.
The third flaw, she continues, is the lack of actual implementation. Nada stresses that judicial independence remains incomplete, while the autonomy of universities, press freedom, and access to information are still restricted — making the entire human rights framework, as she puts it, “a closed circle that produces neither justice nor accountability.”
Meanwhile, Nivin Obeid, Chair of the New Woman Foundation, argues that the crisis of the National Human Rights Strategy lies not only in its content, but also in the absence of a clear implementation plan and effective oversight mechanism, which, in her words, makes it “a document without impact.”
Speaking to Zawia3, Obeid explains that any serious national strategy must be grounded in a time-bound execution plan with defined performance indicators and allocated budgets — “none of which have materialized in the past five years.”
She adds that the monitoring and evaluation mechanism in the current strategy is “extremely weak,” as it does not allow for independent civil society participation in oversight or assessment. Obeid emphasizes that involving civil society should be genuine and effective, not symbolic, through clear participatory frameworks that ensure independent representation.
According to the sources cited in this report, as Egypt approaches the launch of the second phase of its National Human Rights Strategy, the initiative has yet to fulfill its core mission of improving the human rights situation in the country. Testimonies point to a persistent gap between legal texts and practice, and to limited transparency and participation, even after five years of implementation.
Against this backdrop, the question remains: Will the new phase transform the strategy from a paper document into a genuine state commitment — or will it follow the same path as the first, its promises once again reduced to mere ink on paper?
