Amira Abdo, who holds an intermediate qualification (an industrial technical diploma), was shocked when an employee at Cairo Airport informed her on Sunday that she was banned from travelling to visit her husband, who lives in Saudi Arabia, because of a recent decision issued by the Passports Authority of the Ministry of Interior, under which women in the “intermediate qualifications” category, or what were described as the “lower categories”, are not allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia except with prior permission from the competent authorities, which led to her losing the price of her ticket and the disruption of her trip.
The next day, Amira, 37, went to the Passports Authority in the Abbasiya district of Cairo, where she was informed by an official that the decision covers personal visits and work, and does not apply to family visits. Amira stood confused between the statements of the airport administration and the Ministry of Interior, because of the absence of a clear mechanism for implementing the decision, as she did not obtain an official letter for travel, and the officials merely informed her verbally.
Amira tells Zawia3: “I don’t know where to go to complete my travel papers. At the airport, the employee says travel needs a security permit, while they deny that in Abbasiya. I and hundreds of other women who were in front of the Passports Authority today do not know where to go or what must be done. We are waiting for an official announcement or a clarification of the mechanism for dealing with this amid the current state of contradiction and confusion.”
Samah El-Gharbawy, 40, who holds an intermediate qualification (a commerce diploma), works in trading cosmetics, accessories and Gulf clothing, and travels to Saudi Arabia twice a month to follow up on her business. Samah found herself forced to cancel her booking until she obtains the travel permit from Abbasiya. She says: “The decision came suddenly and confusingly, and it would have been better to inform us of it in advance, even a few days before, so that we could arrange our papers. I travel for work, and I have commitments both here in Egypt and with export offices there, so it is necessary to obtain the permit as soon as possible. With the severe crowding I saw today in Abbasiya, it seems impossible before a week, and we still do not know how long it takes to obtain the permits or what papers are required.”
Samah points out that the employees lack information about the decision and the required papers, which increased the burdens on women wishing to travel.
On Sunday, Egyptian airports began implementing the decision of the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality at the Ministry of Interior, which obliges women from the lower categories wishing to travel to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for visit or work purposes to obtain prior permission from the administration before travelling, and to have the seriousness of their justifications for travel verified.
The decision, a copy of which Zawia3 obtained, stated that “it has been decided, as of 26 October 2024, to oblige women from the lower categories wishing to travel to Saudi Arabia for visit or work purposes to obtain prior permission from the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality, while verifying the justifications for their travel.”
According to General Instructions Circulars No. 17 and No. 62 of 2014 and No. 11 of 2015, the term “lower categories” is defined to include the following professions: “babysitters, housekeepers, maids, nannies, cooks, hairdressers, beauty experts and beauty teachers, seamstresses, fashion designers, embroidery experts, waitresses, saleswomen, sales and marketing representatives, secretaries, home nurses, switchboard operators, nursery supervisors, file clerks and administrative supervisors”, in addition to non-working women, and women with intermediate qualifications and diploma holders.
A Second-Class Citizen
Hala Emara, 35, who holds an intermediate qualification, recounts what happened to her after she was accepted for a reception job at a major hotel in Saudi Arabia, considering that this opportunity was a lifeline for her and for the orphaned children she supports. After she prepared her papers, completed the procedures and booked a flight ticket, she was surprised on arriving at the airport by a decision preventing her from travelling without prior security permission from the authorities, because of her educational qualification.
Hala, who lives in Sharqia Governorate, says: “I felt a severe shock, I could not take it in at first. How can education be a barrier that prevents me from travelling? I went to the employee and asked him: Haven’t I brought all the required documents? He calmly replied that the latest decision obliges women holding intermediate or lower qualifications to obtain prior security approval to travel to Saudi Arabia for work or personal visits. I returned home broken; this decision deprives my family of an opportunity to improve our circumstances, and I hope it will be cancelled or amended so that I can travel and work without being classified as a second-class citizen.”
The situation is somewhat different for Khadija Abdel Salam, 32, who was planning to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah on a transit visa. Although she holds a higher qualification (a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Education), the qualification is not recorded in her passport, which forces her to change it and record the qualification, paying a data amendment fine that may exceed EGP 2,000. If she does not amend the data, she will have to obtain a security permit from the Passports Authority in Abbasiya as a “housewife”, but she faces an additional challenge, as she lives in Assiut Governorate in southern Egypt, which means the hardship and cost of travelling to Cairo.
A Material and Moral Burden
Ahmed El-Bakry, a member of the Egyptian Federation of Tourist Chambers, explains in his conversation with us that the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality decided, as of Saturday, that women from the lower categories must obtain prior permission when wishing to travel to Saudi Arabia, with verification of the justifications for travel. The decision covers women holding passports registered with professions such as “housewife, unemployed, diploma holder”, and applies to all age groups. He noted that the decision is currently applied at all Egyptian airports, and that the women covered by it will not be allowed to travel until they obtain the required permit from the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality, while ensuring the seriousness of the reasons given for travel.
Ayman Abdel Latif, a member of the Chamber of Tourism Companies, confirms to Zawia3 that the issuance and application of the decision came as a resounding surprise to holders of work or visit visas to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, since it was issued and applied on the same day without a grace period, which caused some women to return from the airport, unable to board the plane, and to lose the value of their flight tickets. He pointed out that the women covered by the decision are now forced to pay EGP 2,100 to obtain the travel permit from the Passports Authority in Abbasiya, which is an obstacle for female citizens living in the provinces and constitutes a material and moral burden on them, especially since most of the travellers are ordinary women and some of them are elderly, and they may not carry extra money with them.
Ayman attributes the reasons for the decision to what he described as some Egyptian women travelling to Saudi Arabia on work or visit visas and working in unsuitable places, or going to work as domestic workers, which sometimes exposes them to violations and physical assaults, or to fraud and deception by employment offices. All this prompted the authorities in Egypt to protect their female citizens through the security permit. He stressed that there was a poor choice in the wording of the decision, perhaps due to haste, and that the words should have been selected to spare those women the social embarrassment of being described as from the lower categories, expressing his fear that the decision would cause crowds of male and female citizens in front of the Passports Authority and disrupt travel procedures to Saudi Arabia.
Other Dimensions of the Decision
Mohamed Salem, a member of the Egyptian community in Saudi Arabia, says there are other dimensions that may explain this decision, related to some Egyptian female citizens being defrauded by travel and overseas recruitment offices. He explains that some women used to travel to work in Saudi Arabia, but faced great difficulties on arrival, finding themselves on the street without shelter, or being forced into temporary work as domestic workers or as waitresses in cafés. He points to some of them being subjected to serious physical assaults, up to rape, while others were dismissed from work without their dues.
Salem adds that the decision does not cover family visits, which do not require a permit or a security inquiry, but concerns personal and tourist visits, work visas, the business visa and transit. He expressed his disapproval of the decision being issued and implemented suddenly, which left many female travellers unable to catch their flights to Saudi Arabia.
Despite the assurances of the member of the Egyptian community in Saudi Arabia that the decision does not cover women travelling to perform Umrah and does not require holders of higher qualifications to obtain travel permits, Zawia3 obtained images of travel permits issued by the Passports and Immigration Authority dated 27 October this year, belonging to women with intermediate and higher qualifications, for the purpose of performing Umrah. The community member believes this points to a state of confusion in implementing the new decision.
An Unconstitutional Decision
Human rights lawyer Fatma Serag, director of the Legal Aid Unit at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, expresses her astonishment and disapproval at the way the decision issued by the Passports and Immigration Authority on 26 October this year was worded. Speaking to Zawia3, she stresses that it entrenches policies of racism and gender-based discrimination and deepens social disparities based on gender, level of education and the nature of the profession, which contradicts the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates in Article (53) that “Citizens are equal before the law, possess equal rights and public duties, and may not be discriminated against on the basis of religion, belief, sex, origin, race, colour, language, disability, social class, political or geographical affiliation, or for any other reason. Discrimination and incitement to hate is a crime punished by law. The state shall take all necessary measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination, and the law shall regulate the establishment of an independent commission for this purpose”, stressing the need to challenge this unconstitutional decision before the Supreme Constitutional Court.
The human rights lawyer considers that the decision restricts women’s right to travel, and citizens’ freedom of movement and travel, which are among the public freedoms stipulated in the Constitution, as Article 62 of the Egyptian Constitution, amended in 2019, stipulates that “Freedom of movement, residence and emigration is guaranteed. No citizen may be expelled from state territory, nor banned from returning to it. No citizen may be banned from leaving state territory, placed under house arrest, or banned from residing in a particular area, except by a reasoned judicial order for a specified period of time, and in the cases defined by law.”
Intisar El-Saeed, a lawyer and human rights defender and chair of the board of trustees of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, believes that the decision, which described some women as “women from the lower categories”, is insulting and contains discrimination and racism against female citizens who have rights and duties. The terms were not chosen with care when it was drafted, and words were used that entrench marginalisation and racism against housewives and society’s demeaning view of certain professions such as domestic work, which is valued in the civilised world. She noted that the decision included a restriction on women’s freedom to travel, but she does not rule out that Saudi Arabia may have placed restrictions on travel to it because of the many deaths among Egyptian pilgrims on visit visas during the last Hajj season.
Hala Doma, a human rights lawyer and director of the Horreya Law Office, believes that the context, reasons and justifications of the decision issued by the Passports and Immigration Authority are unclear, and that it describes women with intermediate qualifications, domestic workers and housewives as lower categories, while it did not include unemployed men or men holding intermediate certificates, which entrenches discrimination and inequality between the sexes and among members of society, and contradicts the Constitution and the law.
Discrimination
Gender researcher Mai Saleh stresses that Egyptian society suffers from a problem of not committing to the use of gender-sensitive language, but the transfer of language that is not gender-sensitive into the state’s official decisions represents a problem that reflects the vision of those behind the decision. She said that no similar decision describing female citizens as lower categories had ever been issued in Egypt, not ruling out that the Saudi embassy issued the decision and sent it to its Egyptian counterpart, which published it with the same wording, which reflects a demeaning view of women in line with Saudi culture’s bias against women.
Mai asks: “Who has the right to classify some groups of society as inferior? And who determines the validity and authority to judge the justifications for travel? And when are they convincing or unconvincing?”, stressing that the classification included in the decision is insulting and discriminatory, entrenches social discrimination based on class or profession as well as gender discrimination, and reveals that domestic work and the caring role women perform at home are not valued in our society, while the world celebrates the economic role of care work and its importance for the family and society.
The researcher points out that the Anti-Discrimination Commission is a postponed constitutional entitlement, stipulated by the 2014 Constitution, and no decision has been issued regarding it. While the forms of discrimination women face are described as individual practices and societal culture, a government decision now comes that entrenches discrimination. She added that the decision restricts freedom of travel and movement, which are inherent human rights according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Egyptian Constitution, and contradicts all women’s rights strategies in Egypt, especially since women have full legal capacity in society and the right to travel without obtaining the husband’s consent, and women are not subject to military conscription, so she sees no justification for restricting their freedom to travel.
The decision obliging women holding intermediate and lower qualifications to obtain prior permission to travel to Saudi Arabia for work or personal visits represents flagrant and unacceptable discrimination, according to MP Sanaa El-Saeed, speaking to Zawia3. She considers that the decision classifies society on the basis of educational qualification and restricts the right of women holding intermediate qualifications to travel, which violates the principle of equality among citizens and violates the Egyptian Constitution by discriminating between females and males in rights, as Article 11 of the Constitution stipulates that “The state commits to achieving equality between women and men in all civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”
The MP explains that the decision raises questions about the justifications for this restriction, the reason it is limited to women and not men, its targeting of certain categories, and its obliging women wishing to work or make personal visits to obtain prior permission, while women are allowed to travel to perform Hajj and Umrah and family visits without restrictions, which contradicts the principle of equality. She expressed her deep displeasure at discriminating against women on the basis of educational level, stressing that the decision infringes women’s rights to travel and move freely and grants unjustified privileges to one group over another.
The MP affirms her rejection of the decision in form and substance, and says she will take legal action, starting with submitting an interpellation in parliament to demand that the competent authorities clarify the legal foundations of the decision and the extent of its consistency with the principles of the Constitution, especially regarding women’s rights, stressing the importance of confronting such decisions that negatively affect female citizens’ rights, to ensure equality and non-discrimination, and to subject decisions to the principles of transparency and fairness.
While Amira, Samah, Hala and Khadija were each deprived of their right to freedom of travel and incurred the loss of their flight ticket costs, they and many other affected women wishing to travel feel insulted by the government decision’s description of them as lower categories, because they are housewives, hold intermediate qualifications, or work in professions the decision’s drafter considers substandard, which makes them feel they are second-class Egyptian citizens, while other women pay the price of the confusion surrounding the decision and its implementation procedures, despite not being concerned by it, and are forced to obtain permits and lose effort, time and money, or have their right to travel suspended if an airport employee decides so.
