Joint report on mounting human rights crisis.. Thirteen rights groups present recommendations to the Egyptian government as the UN review of its rights record approaches

On 17 December 2024, thirteen Egyptian human rights organizations published a joint report on the worsening human rights crisis in Egypt over the past five years. The report observes that rights violations are escalating in tandem with a systematic strategy involving all state institutions, which has compounded the political, economic and social crises that continue to plague Egyptians.

The report reviews how the Egyptian authorities have criminalized rights associated with political participation, highlighting in particular the 2024 presidential elections, when the authorities targeted the competitors of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and their supporters. The report also examines the mounting violations during the period from November 2019 to the middle of the current year, focusing on violations of the right to life and the use death penalty, protection from torture and enforced disappearance, and the safeguarding of peaceful assembly and free association. The report also examines women’s rights and violence against women, gender rights and freedoms, and the human rights situation in Sinai, in addition to conditions in places of detention, violations against refugees, forced evictions, and the repression of Egyptian activists abroad. 

As the report notes, government initiatives claiming to address the human rights situation ring hollow, aiming only to whitewash the Egyptian authorities’ record before the international community. The report points to steps taken by the Egyptian government to legitimize, legalize, and codify its repressive practices and violations of the past decade, demonstrating that it has no intention of changing or reforming them. 

The report offers a series of recommendation that must be implemented as a first step to address the human rights crisis in Egypt, starting with an immediate moratorium on the death penalty as a prelude to its abolition. Other recommendations call for an end to arbitrary detention and the improvement of prison conditions, and for legislative amendments that would end existing repressive laws used to retaliate against dissidents. There are now more political prisoners in Egypt than anywhere else in the region.

The rights organizations call on the government to release tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience, put an end to systematic torture and enforced disappearances and hold those involved accountable, and give independent human rights organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross access to inspect prison conditions. They also demand an end to the practice of ‘recycling’ detainees in new cases with the goal of illegitimately prolonging their detention, and an end to the use of terrorism charges to arbitrarily detain dissidents without evidence.

On the statutory level, the report recommends the repeal of counterterrorism laws and decrees establishing exceptional courts, together with the repeal of legal provisions that allow civilians to be tried in military courts. All legislation, including the Penal Code and emergency laws, must be brought into line with the relevant international standards. The recommendations underscored the need to repeal Law 149/2019 on civic work, which deprives civil society of independence, and amend laws regulating the press, communications, and cybercrime to align with international standards. In addition, the report recommends the enactment of legislation criminalizing domestic violence, a unified law on the construction of houses of worship, and a new personal status law that accords with international standards, to be drafted in consultation with independent human rights organizations. It also calls for the formation of an independent committee to combat gender discrimination.

The recommendations underline the need to refrain from persecuting religious and ethnic minorities, to stop incitement against LGBT people, and to ensure the integrity and freedom of the electoral process, including the parliamentary elections scheduled for 2025.

The organizations submitted a copy of the report to the United Nations in July, in preparation for Egypt’s fourth Universal Periodic Review of its human rights record, scheduled for January 2025.

The report was prepared by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Ankh Association, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, Committee for Justice, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, the Nadim Center, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, the Refugees Platform in Egypt, EgyptWide for Human Rights, the Foundation for the Support of Law and Democracy, and two organizations that preferred not to be named for fear of reprisals.