When Egypt appeared before the United Nations Human Rights Council???s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva last week, representatives from the country stated that their government was committed to ???true social justice??? and political inclusivity. While these affirmations are welcome, they fly in the face of legislative and administrative reforms currently being enacted, which have exacerbated the marginalization of ordinary people.
Furthermore, these measures have been accompanied by reprisals against human rights defenders, particularly those working to confront widespread deprivations of economic and social rights suffered by large swathes of the population.
Restrictions on freedom of association, assembly, and expression were a dominant theme in the UPR???in particular, the government???s ultimatum that NGOs register under the repressive Law 84/2002, a deadline which is set to expire today. Dozens of Egyptian organizations made submissions to a stakeholders??? report. Amidst a worsening climate of intimidation, however, most decided not to attend the session, fearing their participation might result in reprisal or possible persecution.
The head of the Egyptian Delegation, H.E. Ibrahim el-Heneidi, Minister of Transitional Justice, assured the Council that the government was listening to civil society???s concerns about both the registration deadline and an even more draconian law regulating NGOs that has been proposed. Consultation on the latter issue would be extended to find consensus, he stated, a commitment the Egyptian government must be held to.
The UPR, a peer-review mechanism by which a country???s performance with regard to a broad spectrum of human rights is examined by representatives from other member states, came one year after Egypt appeared before the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. On that occasion, the Committee, made up of independent experts, issued a comprehensive set of recommendations, which Egypt has failed to act on. Indeed, social and economic policies enacted since the 2011 Revolution have served to undermine the economic and social rights of the Egyptian people, with poverty and inequality rising and unemployment soaring, at the same time as basic social services are cut.
For this reason, the UPR was an important opportunity for States to hold the Egyptian government accountable for neglecting all its human rights obligations and freedoms, including people???s right to be free of poverty and deprivation. In their submission to the UPR, human rights and social justice organizations denounced socio-economic deficits, which continue to drive protest and unrest across the country.
The UPR???s recommendations called for Egypt to intensify its efforts to eradicate poverty. The need for more robust measures to ensure the right to social security and to an adequate standard of living was raised repeatedly, in particular for women, youth and person with disabilities. Youth unemployment, which has now become a full-blown crisis with one in three people between the ages of 20 and 29 unemployed, was another major concern raised.
These recommendations echo a number of concerns made in a joint civil society report, coordinated by CESR together with a coalition of Egyptian human rights organizations and endorsed by some 130 labor and civil society groups, which was submitted to the UPR earlier this year. More structural concerns raised in this report regarding the distribution of power and resources in Egypt were further analyzed in a series of factsheets produced by CESR and its partners in advance of the UPR session.
In its closing statement, the Egyptian delegation itself recognized the crucial importance of social justice in securing the country???s transition. The Minister for Transitional Justice H.E. Ibrahim el-Heneidi, who headed the delegation, declared, ???I wish to reiterate that Egypt and its people are full of hopes for a future with a thriving environment for rights, where justice and life in dignity are achieved." Implementing the recommendations of the UPR and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights would be an important first step towards fulfilling this commitment.
Egypt, which has the option to either accept or reject the recommendations, will report back with its responses at the 28th Session of the Human Rights Council in March next year. The government thus has an opportunity to prove that the commitments made at the UPR are not empty rhetoric and set a path to restore the full spectrum of human rights among all those who live within its frontiers. After all, this is not only the desire of the Human Rights Council, but also of ordinary people all over the country.
* For further information or to arrange interviews, please contact CESR Communications Coordinator Luke Holland at lholland@cesr.org.
* To learn more about CESR's work in Egypt, see here.