Please note that on our website we use cookies to enhance your experience, and for analytics purposes. To learn more about our cookies, please read our privacy policy. By clicking ‘Allow cookies’, you agree to our use of cookies. By clicking ‘Decline cookies’, you don’t agree to our Privacy Policy.

No translations available
map of the region with Egypt highlighted

MRG urges action on minority and indigenous rights in Egypt

20 January 2025

This fact sheet on the situation of minorities and indigenous peoples in Egypt was submitted by Minority Rights Group to the 48th Session of the Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls for each UN Member State to undergo a peer review of its human rights records every 4.5 years.

The Situation of Religious Minorities

Egypt is home to a variety of religious or belief minorities, including Christians, Baha’is, Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Shi’a Muslims, Ahmadis and non-believers.

Egypt’s Constitution and legal framework includes discriminatory provisions that create a hierarchy between “revealed” and “unrevealed” religions or beliefs whose followers do not enjoy the same rights. Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution recognize only the three “revealed religions”. Article 64 states that “the freedom of practicing religious rituals and establishing places of worship for the followers of ‘revealed’ religions is a right organized by law”.

In practice, a number of communities have to practice their religion or belief discreetly for fear of being targeted. Bahai’s, non-recognized Christian denominations such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and non-Sunni Muslims, such as Shi’a and Ahmadis, have been restricted in practicing their religious rituals publicly, having to meet discretely at homes. Baha’is are also being barred from establishing new cemeteries and marriages performed by the Baha’i community are not recognized by the state and are left undocumented. Article 134 of Chapter 5 in the second section of the Real Estate Registry Regulations bans the registration of Baha’i and Jehovah Witnesses marriage and property. Principles of Islamic Sharia is applied to Christians also in matters of inheritance, effectively restricting Christian women from recourse to equal inheritance rules. Sharia-based rules that are discriminatory need to be repealed.

Blasphemy laws are being used against members of religious minorities, to criminalize their expression or their religious practices. Articles 98(f), 160 and 161 of the Penal Code ban “blasphemy” or ridicule of religions or religious observances. On the contrary, authorities do not act to prosecute incitement to violence against minorities, which commonly precedes attacks and hate crimes.

Christians, while adherents of a recognized religion, see their freedom of religion or belief severely limited in practice. The Church Building Law 80/2016 imposes discriminatory requirements that adds restrictive conditions to obtain permits to build or repair churches. Furthermore, requests for construction of new Churches have been administratively mismanaged, with a few cases in which requests have received neither an approval nor rejection.

In some instances, churches that have been granted a permit to renovate, or were awaiting licensing by the committee established by the 2016 law to look into the status of unlicensed churches, saw renovation work prevented by attacks from mobs. Incitement and attacks by mobs against churches and are regular occurrences in Egypt, happening several times a year. They have rarely led to prosecutions or trials.

Christians also face obstacles to their right to access justice and to a remedy following mob violence or hate crimes, particularly as state authorities regularly engage in intercommunal customary sessions of reconciliations following incidents of communal violence against Coptic Christians, instead of holding perpetrators accountable through prosecution. These reconciliation sessions typically fail to offer effective remedies to victims and rather lead to the circumvention of justice and accountability.

Minority Rights Group recommends that the state of Egypt:
  •  Ensure that freedom of religion or belief, including individual and collective practice of religion, is granted equally to members of all religious or belief communities. Religious-based laws and regulations that are discriminatory must be repealed.
  • Repeal Articles 98(f), 160 and 161 of the Penal Code, known as the blasphemy articles and stop harassing or prosecuting members of marginalized religious groups for religious views and opinions they express.
  • Repeal the Church Building Law 80/2016 and replace it with a unified legal framework for all places of worship that does not discriminate on the ground of religion or belief.
  • Prevent violence against religious communities by prosecuting those responsible of incitement to hatred. Hold perpetrators of violence against marginalized religious groups accountable.
  • Ensure that reconciliation sessions – when organized – are convened at the demand of concerned communities, and complement rather than substitute legal accountability and prosecutions before courts.
  • Allow the Baha’i community to register their marriages and acquire spaces for cemeteries. The Ministry of Justice must allow official registrars to register marriage of Baha’is and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Article 134 of Chapter 5 in the second section of the Real Estate Registry Regulations banning the registry of Baha’i’s and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ marriage contracts should be repealed.

Situation of Indigenous Peoples

In the name of the fight against terrorism, since 2014, the Egyptian Armed Forces have demolished thousands of homes and buildings in Sinai and have bulldozed tens of thousands of agricultural acres, leading to the forced displacement of approximately 150,000 indigenous Sinai Bedouins according to the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.

Some tribes have been promised that they would return to their land. However, these promises did not materialize, leading to protests by the tribes to which state authorities answered through a wave of repression including the arbitrary arrests and detention of 54 protesters in October 2023 and following months, many of whom are facing terrorism charges before military tribunals. Since the Mubarak era, Sinai Bedouins have regularly been subjected to enforced disappearances, torture and unfair trails.

Indigenous Nubians, living in the South of Egypt, have been massively displaced during the construction of dams along the Nile. They have a recognized right to return to their ancestral land guaranteed under Article 236 of the 2014 Constitution. However, since 2014, several presidential decrees have been allocating parts of those ancestral lands to business projects or military purposes, creating a situation where Nubian’s right to return cannot be exercised. These include decrees 444/2014 and 355/2016. Compensation has been granted as an alternative to the right to return to the Nubian historic lands, that had to be exercised within ten year after the adoption of the 2014 Constitution according to its Article 236. The process of compensation lacked fairness and did not allow the Nubian people to express their free, prior and informed consent.

Minority Rights Group recommends that the state of Egypt:
  • Respect the land rights of Sinai Bedouins and Nubians, and realize their right to return to their ancestral lands from which they have been displaced.
  • Stop arresting and prosecuting members of the Sinai Bedouin indigenous people in relation to their peaceful protests and demand for their right to return to be respected.
  • Implement the provisions of constitutional Article 236 and repeal presidential decrees that have allocated parts of the Nubian ancestral lands without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous Nubian people.

Rights of the LGBTQAI+ Community

Egyptian law does not expressly criminalize queer sexual intercourse or transgender identification. However, various vaguely worded legal provisions including law 10/1961 and article 25 law of Cyber-crime law 175/2018 are used in practice to criminalize queer relationships and queer and gender-non-conforming expression. Investigation methods used by law enforcement routinely violate human rights. This includes law enforcement entrapping queer individuals through same sex dating sites. Men suspected of homosexuality under investigation for homosexuality are commonly forced to undergo anal checks which contravene international legal standards and amount to torture.

The health system pathologizes trans identities and a sex assignment review committee set by the government to take decisions on sex assignment surgeries has been dysfunctional, which has put intersex and transgender individuals in need of surgery at risk for their physical and mental health.

Minority Rights Group recommends that the state of Egypt:
  •  Amend law 10/1961, law 175/2018 to ensure that individuals are not arrested, investigated, prosecuted or harassed by law enforcement agents and the judiciary in relation to their sexual orientation and gender identity.
  • End the practice of anal checks, which constitute a form of torture and contravene international law.
  • Ensure the right to privacy, health and due process are enjoyed by all without discrimination on any basis including their religion or belief, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Rights to Nationality

Bahá’ís struggle to acquire ID cards, which in Egypt mention the religion of its holder. As Egypt restricts the conversion from a recognised religion to Bahai’sm, newborns to Baha’i parents are unable to access birth certification if one of the parents has a recognized religion stated on their ID rather than a “dash” (granted for the Bahai’s by courts as a sign of their unrecognised faith) in the religious section of the ID. This has resulted in a risk of statelessness for many Bahá’í children who remain without documentation.

Sinai Bedouins live in remote areas of Egypt. As the closest public notary is often hundreds of kilometres away, travelling to a registration office in time for registering babies is materially difficult. Further challenges arise for parents who lack documentation themselves, and therefore cannot pass security checkpoints to reach a civil registry office.

Beja are stateless tribes that inhabit the Halayeb and the Shalateen triangle. Egyptian citizens who marry members of the Beja minority in southern Egypt cannot pass their nationality on to their children despite Article 6 of the constitution that guarantees the nationality to children of Egyptian mothers or fathers.

Transgender individuals struggle to get their national ID cards corrected with their new gender. Personal opinions of state employees sometimes present hurdles that prevent individuals from selecting the gender they identify with and require prior approval of Medical Syndicate Sex Reassignment Committee.

Minority Rights Group recommends that the state of Egypt:
  • Ensure that all citizens can receive accurate ID cards that reflect their legal identity, irrespective of religion, ethnicity marital status, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity or any other characteristic.
  • Ensure that government bodies providing services are reachable and accessible by marginalized communities.
  • Take measures to remove the religious section of ID cards.