Concern about children’s safety in Egyptian schools has grown following reports of sexual abuse and violence inside educational institutions. The Education Ministry describes incidents as isolated and says the system is functioning well, while cases and research raise questions about structural shortcomings in child protection.
A Zawia3 data investigation published in December documented 75 school-related sexual-assault cases between November 2023 and November 2025. Politicians and rights advocates described the findings as evidence of repeated abuse; the ministry’s spokesperson rejected characterising it as a widespread phenomenon.
The Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of Childhood Conditions, together with the Egyptian Association for Economic and Social Rights, filed an administrative-court case against the education minister seeking implementation of Article 10 of the Child Law’s executive regulations and effective institutional safeguards.
In this interview, foundation head Hany Helal explains the lawsuit, responds to Zawia3’s findings and discusses the Education Ministry, National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), social violence and proposals to toughen punishment for children. His responses below express his assessments and proposals.
What are the details of the lawsuit seeking implementation of Article 10?
We documented incidents and violations in different educational institutions showing the absence of an integrated protection system. Research suggests that educational institutions can repel children rather than welcome them. The entire system needs review.
That means examining staff qualifications, curricula, buildings and equipment. What we are seeing is not simply an isolated incident but a structural problem requiring comprehensive, sustainable treatment.
Recent violations show protection procedures are not effectively applied. When the Child Law was amended in 2008, we insisted on provisions requiring institutional safeguarding. These must be practical systems, not merely written rules.
They should apply to every institution dealing directly with children, including schools and nurseries, not just Education Ministry schools. The law explicitly provides for this.
Our case seeks to compel an executive body to implement existing national law requiring protection policies and procedures in all institutions working with children.
Safeguarding starts before hiring or even building a school. Design must consider privacy, safety and suitable monitoring. From directors to junior staff, recruitment should include criminal-record checks, psychological assessment and specialist safeguarding training. The aim is prevention and serious responses when abuse occurs, rather than delayed reactions after harm.
Our investigation documented 75 cases within school facilities, often classrooms or places away from cameras. How do you interpret that?
I would not automatically call it a widespread phenomenon: that description requires figures and rates establishing scale and prevalence. Seventy-five cases in two years are serious, but do not alone establish statistical prevalence. They are nevertheless an alarming warning that cannot be ignored.
Detection has changed. More media and platforms can now expose cases that existed for years but were not visible. Public attention forces society and officials to respond. Abuse of even one child is a grave crime requiring immediate intervention.
Around 2004, the Nourhan nursery case in Maadi provided a clear example: children had reportedly been sexually exploited for a year before the first case was discovered. It helped drive our work toward the 2008 Child Law amendments.
Is the problem legislation or implementation?
The principal issue is not a lack of laws. Egypt has sufficient child-protection legislation, but compliance is missing. Officials sometimes say they have received no ministerial instruction, even though enactment of the law should be enough to begin implementation.
People enforcing laws, from senior officials to junior employees, need awareness of children’s rights. Children are still often treated within families, communities and institutions as property, rather than human beings with rights at a stage requiring care and protection.
Many families lack parenting knowledge, understanding of rights and tools to recognise abuse. Society lacks an essential culture of children’s rights.
What about Egypt’s international obligations?
Egypt was among the early signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child—one of the first nine, as I recall. Alexandria hosted an international conference in 1990. The convention requires spreading children’s-rights culture widely, but that commitment has not been adequately implemented.
Families need to understand positive parenting, children’s rights, protection and signs of possible abuse. All of this belongs within an integrated culture of children’s rights.
What does that culture involve?
It should exist in clubs, nurseries and schools. A nursery’s legal role includes educating families, not only caring for children. That does not happen adequately, leaving families, enforcement staff, senior officials and even legislators without enough awareness.
Between 2003 and 2008, work on the Child Law amendments benefited from real political commitment to children’s rights. I consider it a golden period. We now ask for childhood to return to the forefront of political priorities.
We are talking about nearly half society—in other words, the future. If we are building a new state and republic, we must first nurture the children who will lead it.
Most perpetrators identified in our school investigation were teachers. What is your response?
Statistics from Egypt and elsewhere indicate that about 80% of child sexual exploitation involves caregivers or trusted people: family, relatives, neighbours, domestic workers, drivers or others close to the child. Children trust someone near them rather than a stranger; that proximity enables abuse, secrecy and threats.
Editorial note: The percentage is the interviewee’s estimate; no underlying dataset is supplied in this interview.
The person responsible for care should provide safety. When that person is the source of danger, the child faces a profound psychological contradiction: who protects me and who harms me? That is why we sought stronger penalties when perpetrators are caregivers.
We argued for doubled penalties in caregiver cases. As an illustrative comparison, a one-year penalty involving a stranger would become two years where the perpetrator is a teacher or another person responsible for the child.
How do you respond to the ministry spokesperson’s assurance that these are isolated incidents and the system is fine?
With respect to officials, the educational system is not fine on child protection. We offered the ministry training for all its teams in safeguarding policies, particularly after recent disasters.
We have developed a guide for social and psychological units on sexual exploitation, due for official release shortly after this interview. We are also preparing family guidance to help recognise possible exploitation-related distress.
Schools do not adequately apply safeguarding procedures. Surveillance coverage is weak. Attention concentrates on private and international schools, while public schools are largely absent from such measures. Some post-incident ministerial decisions were directed only at private and international schools.
We cannot divide children into international, Japanese, British or other educational categories. They all belong to one educational system, and the minister is responsible for their safety. There are positive efforts, but awareness and clear, binding safeguarding remain inadequate.
That is why we filed the case: to require protection policies and training for officials and staff working directly with children.
Violations go back many years. Teachers accused of harassing girls were sometimes transferred to another school, exposing another child. Staff who forcibly cut children’s hair were similarly moved elsewhere.
Our investigation found more administrative measures than criminal sanctions. What is your view?
These are crimes against children and should go before courts, rather than be treated only administratively. Concealment resembles families hiding incest out of fear of scandal: schools close matters internally to protect administrations and ministries while the child is neglected.
When an abuser is moved instead of punished, a child receives the message that abuse must be endured in silence. The child’s rights are not treated as the priority.
Rehabilitation and reintegration become harder when the child remembers that the perpetrator escaped punishment. Accountability, and the child’s sense that justice occurred, help restore trust. Impunity damages the future.
In one recent school case, the alleged perpetrator had previously been suspended for a year for the same conduct and then returned. This recreates the risk inside the institution. Responsibility lies with those administering education and their safeguarding culture.
Where are the ministry’s serious steps to restore the affected children’s dignity? Their dignity was violated inside an educational institution and the response has been insufficient.
Too often, formal measures calm public opinion and the owner later resumes operating the school through legal procedures as though nothing happened.
What should happen instead of placing private or international schools under temporary ministry supervision?
The necessary response in such cases should be withdrawing the school’s licence altogether, rather than temporary administrative supervision pending investigation. A proprietor whose school cannot protect a child has shown an inability to manage an educational institution.
Our children are far more valuable than investment in education. The child’s worth must come first.
How do you assess the NCCM’s role today?
I cannot give a simple answer. At certain times, the council played tremendous roles. The Child Law and bringing civil society together for protection were the result of years of serious work.
The council has undergone transitions. We campaigned to remove its subordination to the Health Ministry and secured legislation making it independent and attached to the presidency.
That gives it real authority to promote children’s rights and protection throughout state institutions. Its founding role is to coordinate ministries and set policies. I do not think it has yet reached the required level. It needs to rebuild relations with civil society, which can help design safeguards and press for implementation.
Some children harm other children, prompting MPs to demand tougher Child Law penalties. What do you think?
Children’s-rights culture includes positive parenting. If a child commits an offence against another child, we should examine upbringing and environment as well as the act. Families aware of rights and parenting help children develop well.
Those responsible for raising or exploiting children must also be held accountable. During the January revolution, some children were accused of burning the Scientific Institute or other violence; we argued they were exploited by others, who should be prosecuted. In a Nasr City school safeguarding training, a child repeatedly stole taps and we discovered his father encouraged it. The child needed protection from that environment.
Violence against children is linked to weak safeguarding awareness among caregivers. Children cannot protect themselves adequately. Families, staff, local authorities, ministries and government need education, and the childhood file must return to the forefront.
The age of 18 is not simply an international-convention threshold. Researchers of development, psychology and human growth examine mental, physical and psychological development through early adulthood, up to around 21. Before that stage, young people should not be treated as having the same full responsibility as adults.
Internationally, penalties for children should be reduced relative to those for adults. The maximum is 15 years, including in Egypt even for murder, and only four countries impose the death penalty on children. Proposals to increase penalties or lower the childhood age indicate a serious problem in Parliament and a need for education in children’s laws and internationally recognised rights.
Editorial note: These are Helal’s comparisons and arguments. Juvenile sentencing varies internationally; 15 years is not a universal global maximum. Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the death penalty for offences committed below age 18.
What should the previous Parliament have done, and what do you hope the new one will do?
Parliamentary oversight of legislation—including Child Law amendments under Law No. 126 of 2008—has been weak. Monitoring protection procedures within ministries and holding them accountable could have substantially reduced violence and violations.
How can that change?
The new Parliament needs comprehensive human- and children’s-rights training using international guidance. South Africa’s experience of assessing state budgets in relation to rights, including children’s rights, is one example worth studying.
Parliament must scrutinise the budget and child-protection allocations. Civil society is ready to help. Oversight should become effective and represent children’s and society’s interests.
