Human rights in Egypt are severely curtailed. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi leads an authoritarian government and, according to Human Rights Watch, "relies on naked coercion and the military and security services as his main vehicles of control". Elements of his rule have been described as even more draconian than that of prior authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak, who was president from 1981 to 2011.
In Egypt's modern history, political freedoms have generally been restricted, with the authoritarian regimes of Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011) and el-Sisi (2014–) dominating politics. Elections took place under both authoritarian regimes but they were not free nor fair. Freedom of media, speech, and assembly have been substantially curtailed.
International human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have criticized the state of human rights in Egypt. As of 2022, HRW has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." The worst mass killing in Egypt's modern history occurred on 14 August 2013 during the dispersal by police of a sit-in held by supporters of the late Mohamed Morsi, where hundreds of protesters were killed. According to HRW and Amnesty, as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Egyptian authorities harass and detain "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence." The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
Formally, human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Rights and liberties ratings and summaries In 2021, Freedom House ranked Egypt as "Not Free" in its annual Freedom in the World report. It gave Egypt a "Political Rights" score of 6/40 and a "Civil Liberties" score of 12/60, with a total score of 18/100. The same year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Egypt at 166th place in its annual Press Freedom Index. As of 2020, the Committee to Protect Journalists regards Egypt as "the world's third-worst jailer of journalists", behind Turkey and China.
See the List of freedom indices for more information on these ratings and how they are determined.
The U.S. Department of State's "2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" listed the following perceived human rights issues in Egypt: Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents and terrorist groups; forced disappearance; torture; arbitrary detention; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; the worst forms of restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including arrests or prosecutions against journalists, censorship, site blocking, and the existence of unenforced criminal libel; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, such as overly restrictive laws governing civil society organizations; restrictions on political participation; violence involving religious minorities; violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons; use of the law to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute LGBTI persons; and forced or compulsory child labor.
Human Rights Watch complained that an "unfair referendum" by authorities in 2019 added amendments to the constitution consolidating "authoritarian rule, undermin[ing] the judiciary's dwindling independence, and expand[ing] the military's power to intervene in political life." Using the excuse of fighting the terrorist ISIS insurgency, "Egyptian authorities showed utter disregard for the rule of law. Since April 2017, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ha[d] maintained a nation-wide state of emergency that [gave] security forces unchecked powers." Since then, the state of emergency has been officially lifted, as of October 2021.
The government-appointed organization for human rights in Egypt is called the National Council for Human Rights.
On 21 September 2022, the Amnesty International released a report titled "Disconnected from Reality: Egypt's National Human Rights Strategy covers up human rights crisis". The report presents a detailed analysis of Egypt's National Human Rights Strategy (NHRS) in light of the human rights situation on the ground, revealing how authorities have used it as a propaganda tool to cover up unrelenting repression of any form of dissent. The five-year strategy was drafted by the government without any consultation with independent human rights organizations or public engagement.
In March 2023, Human Rights Watch released a report stating that the Egyptian authorities refused to provide identity documents, such as passports, national IDs and birth certificates, to critics living abroad. The organization claimed that Egypt probably attempted to disrupt the lives of the dissidents by forcing them to choose between effectively falling in the undocumented category or returning to Egypt, where they could possibly be detained and tortured.
Freedom of speech
The Press Law, Publications Law, and the penal code of Egypt regulate and govern the press. According to these, criticism of the president can be punished by fines or imprisonment. Freedom House deems Egypt to have an unfree press, although it mentions that the country does have a wide range of sources. As of 2020, Reporters Without Borders (RsF) ranked Egypt 166 out of 180 countries in press freedom. Press freedom has gone from 143rd out of 167 nations in 2008, to 158th in the world in 2013. The RsF group laments that the Sisi government has "bought up the biggest media groups to the point that it now controls the entire media landscape and has imposed a complete clampdown on free speech." The two sources agree that promised reforms on the subject have been disappointingly slow or uneven in implementation. Freedom House had a slightly more positive assessment indicating that increased freedom to discuss controversial issues has occurred.
Following the Arab Spring there was hope for greater freedom of speech in Egypt. However, as of February 2012, television journalist Tim Sebastian reported a "re-emergence of fear" in Egypt.
"Once again, I was told, Egyptians are starting to look over their shoulder to see who might be listening, to be careful what they say on the phone, to begin considering all over again who they can and cannot trust." "The intelligence services are extremely active," says a well-known commentator.
The United States State Department voiced concern in August 2012 about freedom of the press in Egypt, following a move by the authorities to put two critics of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on trial. The State Department also criticized Egypt for actions against Al-Dustour, a small independent newspaper, and the Al-Faraeen channel, both of which have criticized Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In July 2016, Egyptian security forces stormed the home of Liliane Daoud, a Lebanese-British journalist, and whisked her to the airport. Without advance warning, Ms. Daoud found herself on a plane to Lebanon. Before her deportation, Ms. Daoud was fired from her job at the local private channel just a few weeks after a pro-Sisi businessman bought it. In August 2018, the Egyptian government put television host Mohamed al-Ghiety on trial for interviewing an anonymous gay man. He was later jailed, fined and sentenced to a year of hard labor.
According to human rights organizations, Egyptian authorities have banned over 500 people, most of which are activists, from travel at Egyptian airports since July 2013.
Amnesty International said Egyptian authorities are increasingly using arbitrary and excessive probation measures as a way to harass activists. They have been imposed extreme conditions in some cases, where activists released from prison forced to spend up to 12 hours a day in a police station. Police probation in Egypt requires released prisoners and detainees to spend a certain number of hours at a police station daily or weekly. Amnesty International has documented at least 13 cases in which probation measures were excessive or were arbitrarily imposed against activists. In some cases, activists are detained for a second time as a probation ways. Amnesty International called on the Egyptian authorities to lift all arbitrary probation measures and order the immediate and unconditional release of activists who have been detained.
In late 2017, the Egyptian police cracked down on the selling of a toy dubbed 'Sisi's testicles' or 'Sisi's pendulum', used by children to mock the president. The police "arrested 41 clacker sellers and seized 1,403 pairs of the 'offensive' toy," according to local daily al-Masry al-Youm.
In 2018, Egyptian dissident Mohamed Ali (currently living in Spain) posted videos of corruption within the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's government. The videos sparked anti-government protests in Egypt. Egyptian authorities requested the Spanish government of extraditing Mohamed Ali on charges of tax evasion and money laundering committed back in his home country. On 9 July 2020, Mohamed Ali appeared in a preliminary hearing in front of the Spanish judge where he was given 45 days' notice to bring up a case on why he should not be sent back to Egypt.
On 31 October 2021, Amnesty International denounced the lifting of the state of emergency in Egypt, saying it does not consider it to be a meaningful step. The rights organization highlighted the ongoing trials of a number of arbitrarily detained activists, human rights defenders, journalists, opposition politicians and peaceful protesters, where the proceedings are majorly fundamentally unfair. Amnesty said that Egypt must immediately and unconditionally release all those facing trials for peacefully exercising their rights, in order to make their decision meaningful.
Events of 2020–2021 On 10 March 2020, a human rights lawyer Zyad el-Elaimy, was imprisoned for a year and fined . He was charged for "spreading false news with an intent to spread panic among the people and for disturbing public peace", during an interview with BBC in 2017. However, the Amnesty International rights group said that el-Elaimy was unlawfully charged for speaking publicly about politically motivated imprisonment, enforced disappearance and torture in Egypt.
On 18 March 2020, four human rights activists, concerning grave conditions of prisons amidst the coronavirus outbreak, called for the release of patrons imprisoned for their political views. However, the Egyptian authorities instead held captive the demonstrators and charged them of spreading the hoax narrative, whilst violating the country's protest ban.