Access Now is joining over 100 civil society and human rights organizations from around the world in calling on governments to take action on Egypt’s human rights crisis, and establish and support a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the deteriorating human rights situation at the upcoming 46th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Egyptian authorities’ systematic abuse of human rights has long been documented and criticized by civil society working on local and global levels. “The Egyptian authorities have a track record of carrying out patterns of reprisals against human rights defenders for their legitimate work, including for engagement with U.N. Special Procedures. These have included arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearance, torture, unlawful surveillance, threats and summons for questioning by security agencies,” the letter reads.
Scheduled to begin later this month, the 46th HRC session has the potential to serve as a kick-off point for a monitoring and reporting mechanism, drawing the world’s attention to the human rights violations carried out in Egypt, and creating avenues to hold authorities to account.
“The international community can no longer sit idly by while state-sanctioned human rights abuses play out in Egypt,” said Marwa Fatafta, MENA Policy Manager at Access Now. “The U.N. Human Rights Council is set to meet this month, and they have a responsibility to take action and send a strong message to the Egyptian government and other authoritarian regimes that there are consequences for their violations and abuse.”