Egypt: UN Review Spotlights Key Rights Concerns

Geneva — Meaningful Follow Up Needed to End Repression and Abuses

The Egyptian government should accept and take urgent action to carry out recommendations made during a United Nations review of its human rights record on January 28, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today.

A total of 137 countries made over 370 recommendations during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. They addressed key issues from torture and arbitrary detention of human rights defenders to access to education and health care in a country with a prolonged climate of repression and a dire human rights crisis.

“As many countries have noted in their recommendations, no amount of public relation efforts by the Egyptian government will change the reality of the country’s dire human rights crisis,” said Amr Magdi, senior Middle East and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Egyptian authorities should focus on meaningful action, some of which does not even require money or resources, but only political will.”

The UPR, established in 2006, is a comprehensive review of the human rights records of each UN member state by other members every four and half years. Local and international organizations, as well as the state under review, can provide information to inform the process.

Human Rights Watch filed a submission as part of the current review. Since Egypt’s last UPR in 2019, the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has made little to no human rights progress, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities have continued to systematically detain and punish peaceful critics, much more than the hundreds of wrongfully detained people they recently released. Security agencies have continued to abuse, torture, and hold detained dissidents in incommunicado detention for long periods.

Egypt remained among the worst countries in the world in relation to the numbers of death sentences and executions, often issued in mass unfair trials. Poverty has increased amid soaring inflation rates and recurring economic crises which have undermined economic rights such as access to food and electricity. The government has also undermined the rights to education and health care by failing to allocate sufficient budgetary resources to ensure equitable access to quality services.

During Egypt’s official presentation, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty acknowledged no abuses, while claiming that the government made “remarkable progress on all aspects.” Yet in the weeks leading up to the review, the authorities intensified a campaign of repression against human rights defenders and journalists.

On January 20, the Supreme State Security Prosecution, an abusive branch of the public prosecution responsible for arbitrarily detaining thousands of detainees on political grounds, brought terrorism-related charges against Hossam Bahgat, a leading human rights defender and the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The SSSP recently released him on bail.

A prominent rights defender and lawyer, Houda Abdelwahab, faces charges and a travel ban since 2016. The charges stem from Case 173, in which the authorities have, since 2016, imposed harsh punitive measures against dozens of nongovernmental groups for receiving foreign funding, even after an investigative judge said in March 2024 that the case had been closed.

On January 16, the authorities detained Nada Mogheith, the wife of a detained cartoonist, Ashraf Omar, and Ahmed Seraj, a poet and journalist with the Zat Misr website, who interviewed Mogheith about her husband’s ordeal in December 2024. The authorities released Mogheith on bail but ordered Seraj to be detained on charges of “joining a terrorist organization” and “spreading false news.” Their lawyers said the charges stem from the interview.

In December 2024, the authorities referred detained lawyer, Houda Abdel Moneim, a former member of the National Council for Human Rights, for trial in two cases with the same charges–joining a “terrorist” organization–even though she had fully served an unjust five-year sentence for the same charges and should have been released in October 2023.

Dozens of Egyptian activists live in exile, fearing detention and persecution should they return to Egypt. The authorities have also continued to harass and detain relatives of dissidents abroad and used vague “morality” charges to prosecute lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence.

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At the UPR session, countries including the United Kingdom and Luxembourg said that Egypt should release human rights defenders imprisoned simply for exercising their freedom of expression. Several countries including Morocco, the UK, and Ireland said that Egypt should ensure that its draft Criminal Procedural Code, rushed before Parliament despite being deeply flawed, is brought in line with Egypt’s international obligations, particularly by limiting the use of pretrial detention and guaranteeing fair trials.The Egyptian government has until the 59th session of the Human Rights Council session, beginning in June, to signal its intention to support and implement the recommendations made during the review.

“To show its willingness to improve the human rights situation, the Egyptian authorities should release the thousands of people detained unjustly, amend abusive laws, and allocate sufficient budgets for education and health care to ensure access to quality services,” Magdi said. “Governments making key recommendations should push the Egyptian government to act and hold it accountable at various forums, including in bilateral relations.”

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