Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential election, a response to U.S. pressure, was a false start for reform, says the International Crisis Group. "Formal pluralism has never seriously limited the dominance of President Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP); extension to the presidential level is a token so long as the opposition is too weak to produce plausible candidates. If the further reforms Mubarak has promised are to be meaningful, they should be aimed at recasting state/NDP relations and, above all, enhancing parliament's powers."

Egypt's first multiparty elections early this month did not yield any surprises as incumbent President Hosni Mubarak retained his position. Despite being declared far from free and fair, the poll was still described as a step forward for a country where opposition candidates have never been given room to operate. “There are violations but in comparison to before, it's much better than we expected,” said Gasser Abdel Razeq, of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights and a vocal government critic. At different polling stations, Mubarak supporters were seen standing over voters as they cast their ballots, while at one polling station, the only person in charge was a party representative sporting a Mubarak button.

Were the Egyptian presidential elections on 7/9/2005 just a rehearsal to satisfy America? Did the Egyptian government do it properly? Will that effect the status of human rights and the possible democracy transformation (change)? Were there any violations? These are questions which the LCHR will try to answer in its report about the elections.

Hosni Mubarak has won 88.6 percent of votes cast in Egypt’s first contested presidential polls, the Presidential Elections Committee (PEC) announced on Friday. Mubarak has been in power for 24 years. The result of Wednesday’s elections gives him another six-year term as president of Egypt. The elections were, however, marked by a low turnout with only 23 percent of the 32 million registered voters casting their ballots.

A Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) report on the Egyptian elections held last week, says the mass media was generally biased toward the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) candidate. The performance of audio and visual mass media was different from state-owned and private mass media. State-owned newspapers, in particular dailies, continued to be flagrantly biased toward the ruling party's candidate, as they were during the first week of the campaign.
* Related Link
Press freedom recommendations for President Mubarak’s fifth term
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14934

Egyptians should boycott the coming presidential elections or vote for one of the opposition candidates, a group of local human rights organisations said on Saturday. In a joint statement, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (HRINFO), the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre, the Nadim Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, the National Association for Human Rights and Human Development, the Egyptian Association Against Torture, and Al-Fagr (Dawn) Institution, expressed their fears that the re-election of President Hosni Mubarak would only lead to more oppression.

The issuing of rules and directives for the upcoming Egyptian presidential elections by the Presidential Election Committee (PEC) on 28 August has enraged both the judges and civil organisations hoping to supervise the poll on 7 September. According to Nasser Amin of the Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and Legal Profession (ACIJLP), the committee has left the names of the 500 most outspoken judges off the list of those supervising the election.

Migration in Egypt is strongly influenced by poverty, economic difficulties and improper socio-economic policies. Until the mid-1950s, foreigners came to Egypt but Egyptians rarely migrated abroad. Egyptian internal and international migration - especially to Libya and Jordan - should be regarded as a sort of survival migration rather than migration for development, says one of the findings of the report.

A new journalists’ group founded in Egypt is calling for the freedom of newspapers from government control. Journalists for Change began June 7 at a Cairo meeting attended by more than 40 journalists from national, private and party newspapers. The group called on their colleagues to unite and join a movement toward reviving a spirit of journalism appropriate for a free, independent and democratic Egypt.

An emergency phone hotline, set up as part of an effort to tackle violence against children, has attracted 25,000 phone calls within its first four weeks of operation, according to child safety workers in Cairo. The service was established in the wake of a Regional Consultation on Violence Against Children in the Middle East and North Africa, hosted by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), which was held in Cairo from 27-29 June.

Leading human rights organisations in Egypt have denounced Saturday’s terrorist attacks on the Sinai holiday resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, also known as the ‘City of Peace’, and called on the government to avoid any excessive security crackdown. Eight human rights groups, including the al-Nadim Centre, the Egyptian Association for the Elimination of Torture and the Arab Human Rights Information Network, issued a joint statement condemning the attacks.

The international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) launched two separate reports on Monday, both criticising an Egyptian law that excessively regulates civil society and the activity of NGOs. "Freedom of association is a core political right. One cannot talk about democracy without being able to have an environment that allows people to come together in a free and unrestricted way," Joe Stork, Deputy Director of HRW's Middle East Division, said at a press conference in Cairo.

Judges in Egypt say May's referendum on constitutional reform was marred by widespread fraud. The referendum on whether to allow rival candidates to contest the presidency in September was approved by more than 80% of voters. The judges said turnout in the booths they oversaw was very low but in government-supervised booths it was recorded at 100% in some cases.

"Where will I go when my caregivers leave? Who will look out for me when they are gone?" These are the questions asked by Marie, an unaccompanied refugee minor from Burundi living in Cairo as she faces an uncertain future. Aryah Somers examines the dilemmas facing refugee minors and concludes that much more needs to be done.

Mohammed Adam came to Cairo from the Sudan, separated from all of his family members when his village was destroyed in Darfur. He does not know the whereabouts of his family and suspects that his parents may have been killed, but he hopes that some of his siblings have also managed to survive.

While he now has his "blue card," the official UNHCR recognition document in Cairo, he is not eligible for resettlement according to the UNHCR. A local nonprofit for refugees in Cairo assisted Mohammed in entering a refugee run school. However, he says, "I have had to drop out of school because I have nowhere to sleep. I am not sure where I will go today or tomorrow."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ("UNHCR") plays multiple roles that are determinative in the life of a refugee. In 2004, the UNHCR reported that it operates in approximately 80 countries, either directly adjudicating refugee status or playing a role in government procedures for the adjudication of refugee status. In this role, it is in a position to model best practices and recognize greater substantive rights to refugees under international law.

UNHCR also facilitates the provision of basic forms of relief, such as food, healthcare and housing to refugees. For instance, in Cairo, Egypt, UNHCR coordinates and assists implementing partners in providing health care, financial assistance, and educational opportunities to refugees. As an advocate for refugees, UNHCR advises and lobbies in other countries on the treatment of refugees within their borders. For example, in the United States in March 2005, UNHCR lobbied for the creation of a National Center for Immigrant and Refugee Children to coordinate national efforts to provide pro bono and social services to immigrant and refugee children released from detention. UNHCR also acts as a gatekeeper for refugees being resettled to third countries.

All of these roles shift and contract or expand depending upon the context in which UNHCR is operating. This makes developing a consistent and coherent strategy difficult. Among the largest UNHCR operations is Cairo, Egypt, which is home to thousands of refugees from sub-Saharan Africa including, among others, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan.

The situation of separated refugee minors in Cairo exemplifies the challenges that UNHCR faces in developing a comprehensive strategy to accommodate these conflicting roles. The failure to develop such a strategy severely and irreparably impacts the life of the separated refugee minor in Cairo leaving him, in many cases, to fend for himself, find his own housing, food, healthcare and education, and hopefully, not fall into exploitative situations.

Government refugee status determination procedures are usually scrutinized by refugee advocacy organizations both locally and globally, including UNHCR. However, UNHCR is the adjudicator in Cairo and thus, it is virtually impossible to truly advocate or critique on a substantive level. For instance, a guiding principle to any decision affecting a separated minor is determining the best interests of the minor as set forth in Article 3 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

However, the lack of transparency in the decision-making process at UNHCR-Cairo makes it difficult to know how the best interests of the minor are being analyzed. This is further muddled by confusion over the standards governing minors’ asylum claims. Last year, UNHCR-Cairo created a Best Interests Determination Committee composed of implementing partner agencies and other non-governmental organizations working with refugees in Cairo. However, the Committee lacked operating guidelines leading to organizational confusion. Furthermore, there were misunderstandings on how to analyze best interests such that extraneous considerations, such as budgetary and time constraints, seemed to creep into the analysis.

Marie is an unaccompanied refugee minor from Burundi and she is living with fellow Burundians who offered her a place to live when she arrived to Cairo. She has been recognized by UNHCR-Cairo, but has been refused resettlement. Her caregivers are in the process of being resettled and as one of the few female Burundians in Cairo, she will be left behind to make her way on her own in the face of substantial language and gender barriers. She asks, "Where will I go when my caregivers leave? Who will look out for me when they are gone?"

UNHCR-Cairo’s role as facilitator for basic forms of relief for separated minors also conflicts with its roles as adjudicator and enforcer of refugee law and gatekeeper. This type of conflict is very similar to the conflict between law enforcement and provision of services that led to the dismantling of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. As a result, in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is in charge of enforcing immigration laws, the Department of Justice is the adjudicator of immigration law, and the Department of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement) oversees the custody and care of separated minors. This was viewed as a solution that would create, at least in theory, an agency exclusively concerned with the care, custody and best interests of unaccompanied minors.

While in Cairo there is fortunately not a system of detaining unaccompanied minors, unaccompanied or separated minors are in a different situation of having to find their own way to UNHCR or have the assistance of community members to register and initiate the refugee status adjudication procedure.

Prior to recognition, which in some cases has lasted up to seven months, the minor receives very limited assistance related to her care and custody. The minor will then be granted refugee status and referred for resettlement, or granted refugee status and referred for local integration, or denied refugee status.

In the case of minors who are referred for local integration, there is supposed to be more comprehensive provisions for the care and custody of the unaccompanied minor. However, there seems to be an ad hoc form of assistance and minimal strategy on how these unaccompanied minors can access opportunities for education and long-term housing. In the case of unaccompanied minors denied refugee status, there is no assistance, as the minor is no longer considered to be within the mandate of UNHCR protection.

With this type of system, it is difficult to determine who is looking out for the best interests of the minor. The UNHCR in Cairo has taken recent positive steps towards improving the situation for separated minors by creating a Best Interests Determination Committee and by developing more expansive approaches to community refugee associations and governmental agencies that work directly with women and children. However, it is critical that a comprehensive strategy that takes into account these conflicting roles be developed to address the precarious life of the separated refugee minor in Cairo. Local nongovernmental organizations have stepped into the void advocating for improved legal representation and provision of services, but much more needs to be done.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Egyptian government has detained hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members solely for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, association and assembly, Human Rights Watch said. The Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated group, staged large demonstrations in Egyptian cities in early May calling for political reform. At least 800 members were arrested, and more than 300 are still in custody, most without charge. In a letter sent to President Husni Mubarak, Human Rights Watch called on the government to release the detainees without delay.  

Reporters Without Borders has expressed outrage at what it called "an unacceptable campaign of intimidation and denigration" against more than a dozen women journalists physically attacked by police and government supporters and called on the authorities to give them official protection. The journalists (12 Egyptians and three foreigners) were among a large number of women physically attacked during demonstrations on 25 May, the day of a constitutional referendum, by police and members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Pro-democracy and human rights organisations are holding weekly candlelight vigils in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to demand an official apology for violence during the constitutional referendum in May. A number of women said they were sexually assaulted when clashes broke out between supporters of President Hosni Mubarak and oppositionists.

The Egyptian government stifles academic freedom in universities by censoring course books, outlawing research about controversial issues and intimidating student activists, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The authorities also fail to protect citizens from Islamist militants who publicly attack professors and students.  “The government’s persistent violations of academic freedom have badly undermined Egypt’s standing as the educational leader of the Arab world,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should end their excessive and arbitrary interference in the activities of scholars, students and universities.”  

African trade ministers have the opportunity to set out a bold agenda for trade reforms that will benefit developing countries at the African Union meeting in Cairo this week, said an alliance of African and international campaigning organizations. Six months before the next World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial in Hong Kong, African leaders should challenge rich countries to keep their promises to put development at the heart of the negotiations, said the alliance from Cairo on the eve of the meeting. "With time running short before WTO members meet in Hong Kong, there is a pitiful lack of progress towards tackling the concerns of developing countries, heralded as central to these negotiations," said Cheikh Tidiane Dieye of ENDA-Tiers Monde, Senegal. "This is why it is crucial for African leaders to remain firm on their demands from the WTO."

Human rights organisations in Egypt have reservations about the fairness of amendments to the country's constitution and consider they constitute a continuation of the violation of political and civil rights. Earlier this year, Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, asked parliament to review article 76 of the constitution to allow, for the first time in Egypt, direct competitive presidential elections. Mubarak has ruled the country for nearly 25 years and the next general election is due in September.