On 27 July, 70 boys and girls living in four orphanages belonging to Al-Gameya Al-Shareya for Cooperation of Those Working with the Quran and Sunnah found themselves facing new challenges after the death of Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Qotb, who had headed the Sayeda Zeinab branch for 47 years, during which he founded four orphanages for boys and girls in the areas of Sayeda Zeinab, El-Mounira and Mokattam, namely “Al-Rahma, Al-Sorour, Al-Diyafa and Al-Salam”, in addition to two care homes for the elderly, medical clinics and a nursery for children.
On the morning of that day, the orphans and their carers discovered that the branch’s storerooms in Sayeda Zeinab, which hold the food allocated to the orphans in the four homes, had been locked and taken over by the main association’s administration, which sparked a dispute between the old administration and the main association and led to great difficulties for the orphans in meeting their food needs and school expenses over three months.
Administrative disputes broke out between the branch’s former administration and the main association, which took control of the branch amid legal debate over the legitimacy of this action, and this negatively affected the conditions of the orphans in those homes.
Under these circumstances, Khadija, 15, and Nour, 13, two of the girls living at Dar Al-Salam orphanage in El-Mounira, were forced to go to the office of the association’s treasurer, Salah El-Din El-Shater, to ask for help in providing food and school expenses. However, the two girls faced improper treatment from the association’s accountant, Omar Khalifa, who refused to help them and appeared in a video circulating on Facebook forcefully pushing one of them.
Reham El-Mawardy, director of Dar Al-Salam, tells Zawia3 that since the death of Sheikh Mohamed Qotb last July, the main Al-Gameya Al-Shareya has not given the home a single pound, while the director goes to the treasurer’s office at the association to hand over the donations that reach the home so they can be deposited in the association’s bank account. She says that over three months the association did not provide food for the five orphan girls who have spent their lives in the home, which opened in 2006, and were it not for in-kind donations from local people who bring the home food such as rice, pasta, chicken and meat, the girls would have been left starving.
She explains that the treasurer refused to give them transport expenses for school and university, as well as money for private lessons, tutoring classes and study summaries, and the director found herself forced to pay out of her own pocket, while donors provided clothes and shoes for the girls before the start of the school year. She stressed that the interim council appointed to run the branch has not begun its duties despite being appointed last August, adding that Al-Gameya Al-Shareya stopped paying the salaries of the home’s workers, who have received only one month’s pay over the past three months.
Reham says: “On the day of the incident, I went to the treasurer’s office with two girls from the home to ask for part of the donation money given by donors to buy the trousseau of an orphan girl in the home who had become engaged; but he refused and told us there was no money. I asked him to give us the money for private lessons and transport, but he refused that too. One of the girls asked him about the donations that I hand over regularly, so he insulted her, and his accountants beat the two girls and threw us out. We went to the Social Affairs Department in Sayeda Zeinab to complain, but we found collusion; we went to Social Solidarity and they did not want us there, and an employee asked us to obey the treasurer. We filed a report at the police station and were questioned by the prosecution, but no action was taken against the treasurer.”
This comes at a time when lawyer Fatma Qotb, general supervisor of the four homes, accuses Salah El-Din El-Shater, the treasurer appointed by the main Al-Gameya Al-Shareya in 2020, of financial corruption, for receiving several donation receipts, copies of which Zawia3 obtained, without depositing them in the association’s bank account. She also accuses him of not recording the branch’s subscriptions since 2021, not depositing the rent of the shops and the building owned by the association in its bank account, and appropriating the orphans’ sponsorship payments instead of depositing them in their post office savings books.
According to Fatma, Salah El-Din combines his position with preaching at two mosques belonging to Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, in violation of Article 39 of the Law Regulating the Practice of Civil Work No. 149 of 2019, which prohibits combining membership of an association’s board of directors with working at the administrative body or other public bodies that supervise, direct, monitor or fund the association, unless the Prime Minister authorises it, and prohibits combining board membership with paid work at the association or any of its activities or projects. Zawia3 also reviewed a July 2020 visit report by the main association’s follow-up department that included some of those accusations.
The conflict that followed the death of the branch head escalated markedly, with testimonies indicating the involvement of a number of former residents of Dar Al-Sorour orphanage, who work as tuk-tuk drivers, in an attempt to rob the association’s branch headquarters in Sayeda Zeinab using knives. However, these testimonies still need official confirmation. Lawyer Fatma Qotb filed a lawsuit against Amira Fathy, director of Dar Al-Sorour, No. 5819 of 2024 Sayeda Zeinab Misdemeanours, accusing her of inciting these young men and using them in acts of thuggery, attacking her family and storming her late father’s office. She also filed case No. 5873 of 2024 Sayeda Zeinab Administrative against her for publishing threats against her on Facebook.
According to Fatma, the crisis began with the director of Dar Al-Sorour when she took the home’s orphan children, including two with intellectual disabilities, on a summer trip a week after Qotb’s death without consulting the association’s branch, leaving one of the children, who has intellectual and motor disabilities, alone in the home’s building with the cook, which prompted the association’s vice-president to file a police report against her and provoked her anger.
At the same time, nine orphan girls living at Dar Al-Rahma suffer from difficult conditions, including neglect and an absence of financial and administrative oversight, according to testimonies about the home’s situation. Four of the girls have intellectual disabilities, and the home’s licences have reportedly been suspended since mid-2017; the girls lived under the personal care of Sheikh Mohamed Qotb, who supervised their care directly.
Orphanages and Political Conflicts
In accordance with the provisions of Law 149 of 2019 on civil associations and institutions, the statute regulations for the branches of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya for Cooperation of Those Working with the Quran and the Muhammadan Sunnah, founded in 1912, stipulate in Articles (65, 66) that if it becomes necessary to dissolve the association, this shall be by decision of an extraordinary general assembly with the approval of two-thirds of its members, after it has been proven that the association is unable to carry out its purposes and implement its regulations registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, and that if a branch is dissolved, its funds and property existing at the time of the dissolution decision revert to the main Al-Gameya Al-Shareya.
According to the account of Sheikh Mohamed Qotb’s daughter, the main Al-Gameya Al-Shareya seized the official papers relating to the properties of the Sayeda Zeinab branch, valued at about EGP 22 million, about a year and a half ago, following ongoing political disputes between the association and Qotb. His daughter says these disputes began after Qotb refused to use the association for political purposes, such as distributing charity cards to the poor and widows in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda during the 2012 presidential election. Qotb also refused to allow the association’s mosque to be used for the group’s political propaganda, and refused a request to allow the late Ahmed Seif El-Islam, son of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, to deliver a sermon. Moreover, his daughter believes the main association sought to oust her father by accusing him of embezzling EGP 27,000, and she accuses the association of exploiting the male orphans politically and neglecting the girls.
After the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters ruled on 23 September 2013, in case No. 2315, to ban the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and seize its property, Al-Gameya Al-Shareya faced accusations from the authorities of involvement with the Brotherhood. Under the court ruling against them, the justice committee issued a decision on 22 December 2013 freezing the funds of 1,055 charities or branches of civil associations on the pretext that they were linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Ansar Al-Sunna Al-Muhammadiya association, Al-Gameya Al-Shareya for Those Working with the Quran and the Muhammadan Sunnah, and the Islamic Medical Association. The committee for seizing Brotherhood funds decided to seize the funds of 132 branches of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, which harmed the children living in its orphanages and the beneficiaries of the humanitarian aid it provides.
At a time when 169 civil associations were dissolved under the label of Muslim Brotherhood associations, by a decision of the former Minister of Social Solidarity, Nevine El-Kabbag, the crisis over Al-Gameya Al-Shareya’s funds did not last long; the Administrative Court of the State Council ruled in June 2014 to suspend the decision, after it was proven to the court that Al-Gameya Al-Shareya had no relation to the Brotherhood and was a charitable preaching association providing its services free of charge to poor Muslims and Christians. The State Lawsuits Authority, as the Cabinet’s representative, appealed to cancel the ruling invalidating the decision to seize the association’s funds, but the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the appeal in April 2016.
Despite the complaints and lawsuits, Decision No. 429 of the Minister of Social Solidarity, Maya Morsy, issued on 25 August, appointing an interim board of directors for the Sayeda Zeinab branch of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, disappointed the orphans and their carers, since the nine appointees are neither members of the general assembly nor members of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya in Sayeda Zeinab, and some of them have interests closely linked to it, in violation of the regulations and of the Law Regulating the Practice of Civil Work No. 149 of 2019; one of them is the brother of the director of Dar Al-Sorour orphanage, who is accused of making threats and using thugs, while another rents a shop owned by the association.
Amr Siam, vice-president of the board of the Sayeda Zeinab branch of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, explains to Zawia3 that the formation of the new board violated the law, which is why the old board refused to hand over the headquarters, revealing that the main association has political ambitions that led it to plan to take control of the Sayeda Zeinab constituency through charitable work, in contrast to the approach of the late Mohamed Qotb.
He adds that those running the association were surprised to find they could not reach the orphans’ food storerooms, located in rooms inside a medical clinic owned by the association, because the doctor who rented the clinic from them had padlocked its entrance and disappeared, which prompted them to seek help from the Social Solidarity Directorate, which opened the storerooms. He added that another crisis facing the four homes is the non-payment of workers’ wages, noting that donations have not been deposited in the association’s bank account for a long time.
Zawia3 contacted the director of social affairs in Sayeda Zeinab for comment on what is happening in the four orphanages belonging to Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, but he refused to disclose any information or make press statements, stressing that he forwards any official complaint he receives to the Ministry of Social Solidarity.
This is not the first time a branch of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya has faced accusations of financial corruption. In May 2018, former MP Dr Mohamed Fouad submitted a briefing request regarding accusations against the board of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya in Nasr City of financial and administrative corruption, foreign funding and trafficking in human organs, and the administrative body’s neglect of its supervision of the branch, to the extent that a decision to dismiss the board chairman was not implemented.
In 2015, documents were leaked online incriminating the Helwan branch of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya in violations including printing 1,200 donation books without the knowledge of the main association and seizing EGP 280,000 from donations allocated to the poor and orphans.
In a video leaked years ago from one of the association’s meetings, Mohamed Mokhtar El-Mahdy, the former chairman of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, who died in 2016, appeared saying that the figures entered in the budget audited by the Central Auditing Organization are one thing and reality is another, so as not to draw attention to the huge figures of the association’s budget, in a clear admission of financial corruption.
Serious Violations
The suffering of orphans living in homes belonging to Islamic charities as a result of political score-settling was not limited to the children of Al-Gameya Al-Shareya. Following the decision of the committee for seizing Brotherhood funds to freeze the bank accounts of associations affiliated with the group, orphan children in their care homes suffered: at times they found no food, electricity was cut off to some homes for non-payment of bills, their school fees went unpaid, and some suffered from a lack of clothes or blankets to protect them from the cold, while the Ministry of Social Solidarity provided no alternatives at the time, as lawyer Ahmed Moselhy, head of the Network for the Defence of Egypt’s Children, tells Zawia3.
He explains that after the decision in 2015 to seize the funds of the Ahbab Allah Association for Community Development in Zahraa El-Maadi, owned by retired media figure Camelia El-Araby, sister of retired actor Wagdy El-Araby, for exploiting the orphan children at Dar Ahbab Allah and endangering them by pushing them to take part in demonstrations supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, the conditions of its orphans deteriorated greatly, coinciding with neglect by the administration, which led one orphan teenage girl to become a drug addict, another to be sexually assaulted and become pregnant as a result, and a third to run away from the home, become involved in prostitution and live in nightclubs.
The head of the network stresses that the Ministry of Social Solidarity has programmes to rehabilitate orphan children so that they integrate into society after passing the legal age, as Article (80) of the Egyptian Constitution stipulates that “A child is anyone who has not reached 18 years of age. Every child has the right to a name and identity papers, free compulsory vaccinations, health and family care or an alternative, basic nutrition, safe shelter, religious education, and emotional and cognitive development.”
He reveals that businessmen and wealthy Arabs have donated to secure the future of the orphans of a number of orphanages, including three homes in 6th of October City in Cairo, namely Al-Rowad, Laylat Al-Qadr and Umm Al-Qura, and Dar Bent Masr, belonging to the Bent Masr Charity Association owned by lawyer Esmat El-Merghany in the Hammamat El-Qubba area of Cairo, by buying apartments in their names for them to receive after they reach 18 and leave the homes. The Ministry of Social Solidarity also helped provide apartments for orphans in the 1980s and 1990s in cooperation with the Ministry of Housing. However, many of them were surprised on reaching the legal age to find that their apartments and the donors’ money in their savings books had been appropriated, and that they had become homeless and penniless, which led some of them to become thugs and criminals dealing drugs or committing robbery by force, especially since they had not received sufficient care and attention in childhood.
The network had filed report No. 4515 of 2016 at the Nozha police station against the “Bent Masr” orphanage, accusing it of expelling three of its orphan children since 2006 and appropriating the apartments allocated to them by the Housing and Development Bank as part of donations to orphan children. The association that owned the homes was soon closed, in August 2016, by a decision of Ghada Waly, the then Minister of Social Solidarity. Orphans of Dar Al-Rowad had also accused its administration in 2022 of appropriating the donation money in their savings books and their apartments, and the home was closed after that.
Ahmed Moselhy points out that some orphans of Al-Rowad, Laylat Al-Qadr and Umm Al-Qura in 6th of October, before these homes were closed, had become thugs robbing people on the roads, as well as drug dealers and users, because the homes abandoned them at 18 without securing their future. Young residents also took over Dar Laylat Al-Qadr and expelled those running it. He noted that some orphanages where sexual or physical assaults on children occurred had their boards dissolved and new boards formed with members who had been among the staff involved in corruption and violations, as happened at a home in the Ain Shams area. He considers that the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s decisions to close orphanages with administrative corruption or violations contravene the law, which calls for developing them to accommodate larger numbers of children deprived of family care and makes closure and removal the last resort, noting that closure causes problems resulting from distributing orphans to other care homes, which leaves them unable to adapt and causes overcrowding.
According to official data issued by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in 2023, the number of orphans in Egypt reached about 1.4 million, divided between children who lost their father (70%), their mother (27%) or both parents (3%). According to the data, the number of orphan care institutions in Egypt fell from about 524 institutions in 2021 housing about 10,500 children to only about 440, while the number of foster families rose to 17,000, and the number of children in foster care exceeded the number of children in care institutions by 28%. Orphans in Egypt receive support estimated at EGP 1.75 billion a year, about 5% of the Takaful and Karama cash support goes to orphans, and civil society supports about 20% of all orphans in Egypt.
In a briefing request in parliament to the former Minister of Social Solidarity in February 2023, MP Hisham Hussein, a member of the House of Representatives for Giza’s ninth constituency, revealed that orphanages in Giza Governorate suffer from severe neglect and mistreatment of children, and that many violating homes had been identified, including Dar Laylat Al-Qadr, which had turned into a drug den.
Hussein confirms to Zawia3 the existence of violations in some of those homes, ranging from verbal or physical abuse of children and the use of physical violence in raising them, or lack of control over the children’s entry and exit, to embezzlement of donation money and failure to channel it properly. He explains that he visited a number of orphanages in his constituency and identified violations and breaches of the law, the most notorious being the Laylat Al-Qadr orphanage in 6th of October district, which had turned into a den of thugs and drugs, as some of its young residents had passed the age of thirty, refused to leave and were engaging in illicit activities. When he informed the Ministry of Social Solidarity of the violations, it intervened immediately, and Dar Laylat Al-Qadr was closed permanently in November 2021.
The MP believes that cases of deviant behaviour, such as turning to drug use or befriending thugs, are individual cases and not necessarily the result of neglect by those running the orphanages, and that when a young resident reaches the legal age he is supposed to be an individual responsible for himself and not become unemployed or behave deviantly. He pointed to Ministry of Social Solidarity programmes to prepare these young orphans for the labour market and social life after leaving the homes, while the Decent Life programme also provides them with assistance, and some homes teach young people a trade to earn a living after they turn 18; however, some of these young people take easy illegitimate paths to make money.
Violations
Over the last ten years, dozens of violations have been recorded in orphanages in Egypt, ranging from financial and administrative corruption, physical and psychological abuse, neglect and unhealthy living conditions, and deprivation of health care and education, to sexual harassment and exploitation. Some attribute these violations to weak government oversight of care homes, the scarcity of financial resources allocated to them, and the lack of adequate training for care home workers to qualify them to work with children.
According to Zawia3’s monitoring of news in Egyptian newspapers and news websites over the last ten years, the peak of reported violations in orphanages that turned into public opinion cases was in 2017. Approximately, five cases were recorded in 2014, three in 2015, five in 2016, about 11 in 2017, two in 2018, one in 2019, two in 2020 and 2021, three in 2023, and about four in 2024.
In 2014, the Makkah Al-Mukarramah orphanage in the Haram area of Giza was closed after officials there tortured a group of children, and appeals spread on social media about those running the orphanage of the Amanat Al-Muslim association for orphan sponsorship in the New Nozha area of Cairo beating and torturing children and putting shoes in their mouths, which prompted the Ministry of Social Solidarity to intervene. Thugs also took control of an orphanage belonging to a charity registered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity in the Raml area of Alexandria, endangering the children’s lives, while a heroin overdose caused the death of a young orphan resident of Dar Laylat Al-Qadr in 6th of October after it turned into a drug den, and a Christian charity was involved in the theft of donations for orphans estimated at EGP 230,000.
In 2015, the New Cairo Misdemeanour Court sentenced the owner of the Dar Rabeh orphanage in the Fifth Settlement to three years in prison with hard labour, effective immediately, for exploiting children and making them work on his farm in Wadi El-Natrun. Social Solidarity closed Dar Al-Basma orphanage because it had no staff or workers, was in poor condition, neglected the girls and made them do housework, malnourished them, neglected their education and mistreated them, as well as Dar Rehab Al-Rahman orphanage in Kafr Tohormos in Giza for committing violations against children.
In 2016, the security services busted a prostitution and human trafficking ring at the orphanage of the Al-Hiba charity in the Siouf area of Alexandria, after it turned into a brothel and a place for selling children. Social Solidarity closed the orphanage of the Gannat Al-Kheir association and moved all the girls to the orphan children’s home of the Al-Huda Al-Islami association after it was proven that four girls had been severely beaten. Public opinion was outraged by the case of an orphan boy named Fares who was subjected to constant beatings and humiliation at the Al-Nusairy orphanage in Mokattam and was sent to the Umm Kulthum juvenile home in Ain Shams, which drove him to run away and head for the railway tracks in a suicide attempt, suffering serious injuries. The girls living in an orphanage in October were subjected to verbal abuse and expulsion by its owner on the pretext of investing its location, and he threatened to frame them on charges of prostitution and drug use. It was also revealed that the Umm Al-Qura orphanage in October had turned into a drug den and was unfit for human habitation.
In 2017, violations reached their peak: the person in charge of the Ishraqa orphanage, owned by the wife of former Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, was referred to the misdemeanour court for beating a number of children at the home, and 35 defendants were referred to urgent trial in case No. 66/2017 over violations and sexual assaults against children at the Fatima Al-Zahraa shelter belonging to the Child Rescue Association in Ain Shams, Cairo.
Social Solidarity closed Dar Al-Orman in the Fifth Settlement and referred the home’s supervisor for investigation over the torture of a child. The Administrative Control Authority in Dakahlia uncovered violations, neglect and an unhealthy environment at the Boys’ Education Institution, Dar Ibnati orphanage, Dar Mary Marina orphanage and the Girls’ Education Home. The Ministry of Social Solidarity closed Dar El-Sheikh Hassan orphanage in Nasr City over poor health, educational and nutritional care of the girls; cases of torture, gross neglect and lack of hygiene were uncovered at the Abeer Al-Islam orphanage in Nasr City; and Dar Al-Salam orphanage in the Hannoville area of Alexandria was closed because of neglect, expired foodstuffs, dogs inside the premises and the spread of rubbish. Meanwhile, the security services found 31 children without birth certificates or identity papers inside an unlicensed orphanage in the Mandara area of Alexandria.
Ghada Waly, the then Minister of Social Solidarity, declared war on violating orphanages in March 2017, subjecting 471 institutions to re-evaluation and new regulations, and said that Egypt has 30,000 orphan care homes, 472 of them governmental, stressing that 75% of the homes deserve closure because of the absence of actual oversight.
But the violations did not stop. 2018 saw the escape of 11 children from a charitable orphan care institution in the Haram City area of October, and an orphanage in 10th of Ramadan City in Sharqia was closed because of violations. In 2019, it was revealed that the orphans of the Abeer Al-Islam home in the Rabaa Al-Adawiya area of Nasr City were suffering from bad conditions inside the home, due to poor hygiene, unfit bedrooms and the poor state of the food the children eat. In 2020, three supervisors were suspended at the orphan care home run by the Social Solidarity Foundation in the Shorouk district of Marsa Matrouh after children at the home were beaten and humiliated, and a supervisor at Dar Fatima Al-Zahraa orphanage in Ain Shams discovered a series of repeated sexual assaults on 35 orphan children by fellow orphans under the age of 18, with the supervisors’ complicity.
In 2021, the Al-Aidy Al-Amina home for girls in Beni Suef district was closed because of cases of harassment of orphan girls, and the 6th of October City authority demolished the Laylat Al-Qadr orphanage after it turned into a den of criminals. In 2022, the authorities decided to suspend Dar Al-Ibtisam wal-Walaa orphanage, which was using children for profit and collecting cash and in-kind donations in violation of the law, and the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced businessman Mohamed El-Amin to three years of aggravated imprisonment on charges of human trafficking and indecent assault of seven girls living in an orphanage he owns in Beni Suef Governorate, and fined him EGP 200,000. The case of the orphans of Dar Al-Rowad in October also stirred public opinion, as they were subjected to severe neglect and an environment unfit for life, exploited financially and then abandoned.
In an attempt to solve the crisis, Nevine El-Kabbag, the former Minister of Social Solidarity, decided on 15 December 2021 to stop granting licences to orphanages for a year, and in January 2022 decided to continue the suspension for another year, revealing in 2022 the closure of 37 orphan care homes as part of a plan to gradually close some institutions, and stating the ministry’s intention to soon announce a number of governorates free of care institutions and to provide the best means of family and quasi-family care instead of institutional care, in accordance with the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children issued by the UN General Assembly in 2009.
In 2023, at Dar Al-Safa orphanage in Talkha, Dakahlia, an orphan girl and boy accused the executive director and the administrative security officer of assaulting and mistreating them inside the home. In 2024, police arrested a young man on charges of sexually assaulting four children inside an orphanage in the Basatin area and filming them during the assault. A television reporter also filed a police report against a well-known orphanage in the Kafr El-Gabal area of Haram for gross neglect, and the prosecution took over the investigation. This October, Minister of Social Solidarity Maya Morsy decided to close the Zinat Al-Hayat orphanage in Giza because it had no staff to care for the girls and there were shortcomings in the services provided to them, along with poor care of the girls. She also ordered the closure of two social care homes for boys and girls belonging to the Boys and Girls Care Association in Aswan for failing to activate the protection policy, the staff’s inability to deal with the children and their problems in an educational way, and financial and administrative violations.
While the Ministry of Social Solidarity has closed more than 100 orphanages over the past seven years because of financial violations and violations of children’s rights, some orphanages still face problems, among them the four orphanages belonging to Al-Gameya Al-Shareya in Sayeda Zeinab, where children suffer the effects of these violations. The situation requires urgent intervention by the authorities to guarantee the rights of orphans enshrined in the Constitution.
