Human Rights Organizations’ Report to the UN Universal Periodic Review Egypt: Whitewashing Campaigns Fail to Conceal Human Rights Crisis

Ten Egyptian human rights organizations submitted a joint report on the human rights situation in Egypt, in preparation for the fourth session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Egypt's human rights record before the United Nations, scheduled for January 2025.

The report emphasizes the worsening human rights crisis in Egypt since the last UPR review session in November 2019, during which the Egyptian government received 375 UN recommendations to improve human rights conditions. Not only has there not been tangible improvement in Egypt’s rights situation but quite the reverse, as indicated by the report, human rights violations have escalated systematically throughout the country, implicating all state institutions and exacerbating the political and socioeconomic crises afflicting Egyptians.

Over the past five years, the Egyptian government has intensified its efforts to conceal the ongoing human rights crisis; claiming to respect the constitution and international treaties while ignoring all Egyptian and UN human rights reports that confirm the escalation of rights violations. During the upcoming review session, it is expected that the Egyptian government will continue to hide behind deceptive initiatives that ostensibly aim to address the human rights situation but in practice serve to whitewash the image of the Egyptian authorities. None of the government initiatives, including the Presidential Pardon Committee, the National Strategy for Human Rights, and the National Dialogue, have resulted in any tangible improvement to the country’s human rights situation.

Additionally, the presidential elections at the beginning of 2024 were marred by violations including arrests of peaceful activists and potential rivals to President Sisi. Neither free nor fair, the elections clearly indicated the absence of any space for opposition or a peaceful transfer of power as the authorities continue to imprison citizens simply for objecting to government-imposed economic policies. Security authorities have also continued to systematically enforce disappearances and torture citizens, and arrest journalists, and bloggers. There has also been an increase in retaliatory acts against human rights defenders.

The report by the organizations documented the extent to which the Egyptian government has violated its human rights commitments, including the UPR recommendations it pledged to implement in 2019. The report reviewed cases of escalating violations from November 2019 to mid-2024 in areas such as the right to life and combating the death penalty, conditions in detention facilities, and protection from torture and enforced disappearance. The report also covers the right to peaceful assembly and association, women’s rights and violence against women, sexual rights and freedoms, human rights conditions in Sinai, and the situation of refugees, forced deportation and cross-border repression against activists abroad.

The report was compiled by ten Egyptian human rights organizations including: Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, ANKH Foundation, Egyptian Human Rights Forum, Justice Committee, Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, El Nadim Center, Egyptian Front for Human Rights, Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, Refugees Platform in Egypt, EgyptWide, and the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, in addition to two organizations that preferred to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation.