African Commission urged to confront deepening human rights crisis in Egypt
Mahmoud Chahrour | U. Ottawa Faculty of Law, CA
November 22, 2025
05:08:00 am
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should take decisive action to address Egypt’s long-running human rights crisis following its review of the country’s record, 22 organizations said on Thursday. The statement followed the commission’s 85th session, during which both the Egyptian government and the commission’s country rapporteur presented reports that rights groups claim misrepresented or overlooked key abuses.
Egypt’s official report, covering 2019 to 2024, rejected the existence of detained journalists or prisoners of conscience and framed restrictions on civil society as measures to promote “transparency.” The country rapporteur’s report similarly omitted reference to widespread violations and described the 2023 presidential election as “peaceful” and “competitive,” despite extensive documentation of repression, prosecutions of potential candidates, and the effective criminalization of assembly, expression, and association. A 2024 “familiarization visit” by the rapporteur was also criticized for involving no meetings with independent Egyptian human rights groups.
Outside official submissions, extensive documentation paints a sharply different picture. Over the past decade, Egypt has detained thousands of peaceful critics, journalists, political figures, human rights defenders, labor organizers, and protesters under broad terrorism and “false news” charges. Rights groups and UN mechanisms have recorded persistent patterns of enforced disappearance, systematic torture, and prolonged pretrial detention, often renewed through the “rotation” of detainees into new cases with similar accusations.
Authorities have blocked hundreds of news and civil society websites, dispersed small demonstrations, and made preemptive mass arrests around anticipated protests over economic conditions, electricity outages, and the government’s response to regional conflicts. Prominent figures such as blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah, lawyer Hoda Abdel Moneim, and political challenger Ahmed Tantawy remained imprisoned or under renewed charges despite serving prior sentences.
https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/11/rights-groups-urge-african-commission-to-confront-egypts-deepening-human-rights-crisis/