EuroMed Rights strongly condemn the new NGO law hastily approved this Tuesday by Egypt’s Parliament.
Not only has the drafting process of this new law been made in a hurry, hampering lawmakers to review it properly before voting on it, but above all this repressive law threatens to put an end to any independent civic and social work in Egypt.
Over the last weeks, EuroMed Rights criticised this law, underlining how it contains a full set of restrictive measures contrary to international human rights standards, putting civil society organisations (CSOs) under the tutelage of the government and the security apparatus.
Government authorisations will be required for all normal civic activities, from conducting research, to collaborating with international organisations, to receiving domestic and foreign funding. Workers and representatives of CSOs could face prison sentences of up to five years for non-compliance. The law refers to the penal code and the illicit gains law. It therefore incorporates their much heavier penalties, such as life sentence or death penalty, for the receipt of unauthorised foreign or funding that harms national security. The dissolution of organisations can be made on very broad grounds. The status of foreign CSOs will become even more precarious and the fees for their registration are now so high that it can only discourage their establishment in Egypt. This clearly violates article 22 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
A new national authority — the National Authority for the Regulation of Non-Governmental Foreign Organisations — will be created; its mandate will not be limited to monitoring foreign organisations, but will also include the monitoring of any NGOs that receive foreign funding, verifying that these organisations are spending the money they receive in approved ways.
This new law does not only target human rights organisations, but also all local development organisations and individual initiatives. It is in line with many current restrictive measures against civil society in Egypt: travel bans on human rights defenders, assets’ freeze of several NGOs, activists sent to jail without having the right to a fair trial. The Egyptian state is severely shrinking the space for human rights work.
The law is now in the hands of the presidency for ratification within a month, after which it can enter into force automatically.
EuroMed Rights call on the UN, the EU and their Member States to immediately call on the Egyptian Presidency, in the strongest terms, not to enact this law that would eradicate independent civil society work in Egypt.
#HarassNoMore #HumanRights activists
