UNHCR Egypthas been registering refugees on behalf of the Egyptian government since 1954.
‘The protection of refugees is first and foremost, the responsibility of the state,’ said a UNHCR spokesperson. ‘So basically, the government is taking back its role.’
UNHCR has issued several recommended changes to the asylum law, which the agency says it was not given a chance to review in advance of it being introduced. These recommendations raised caution around provisions that penalize irregular entry to Egypt, which could impact refugees without valid documentation, the criminalization of groups employing or sheltering asylum seekers, and the lack of explicit assurance that refugees will not be forcibly returned to a dangerous situation. They have also shared a strategy with the Egyptian authorities for a structured transition from UNHCR to state management but are unsure how, or if, this will happen.
Meanwhile, organizations like UNHCR and ECRF are working to shape the amendments for this asylum law, and lobby the EU to push the Egyptian government toward a more just asylum response.
‘To avoid the risk of being complicit in violations against refugees in Egypt, the EU must also ensure that any migration cooperation with Egypt includes human rights safeguards and follows rigorous human rights risk assessments on the impact of any agreements,’ said Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International’s Egypt researcher.
At best, this work could soften the blow of a harsh policy, but many voiced the need for more fundamental shifts to the power structure in Egypt.
‘We need a change in how the government perceives refugees and handles this issue,’ said one aid worker who asked to remain anonymous. ‘International donors have been supporting refugees [but] a lot more is still needed. The [Egyptian] government needs to reconsider its expenditure strategy and stop blaming refugees for its internal issues.’
For many Sudanese families in Egypt, the arrests, extortion and lack of government and humanitarian support are a constant reminder that even those fleeing unimaginable horrors are not safe here.
In Europe, Egypt is often described as a reliable partner: a stabilizing force in the Arab world or a country of safe return. But some experts say this is merely a façade and that the heavy military presence inside the country’s towns and cities masks its institutional fragility. On the ground, Cairo is a city upheld by young men in uniform, stationed at checkpoints with rifles bigger than them. Authority has been decentralised to its most precarious form: control and surveillance exist, but safety does not. New highways and luxury developments tower above decaying infrastructure, and refugees remain excluded from much of public life.
Sayigh, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, has observed how Sisi’s regime has sought to systematically suppress grassroots movements and curtail civil liberties, while awarding power to the intelligence services, military, and police. Support for his government is maintained through patronage circles and a debt-fuelled, infrastructure-based development strategy, dedicated to projects such as expanding the Suez Canal.
The power of this system is dependent on a steady stream of credit from international lenders, which Sayigh describes as ‘the textbook definition of a Ponzi scheme, kept alive by the Emirates, the IMF, the European Commission, the World Bank, and others.’
He notes that Egypt has received upwards of $200 billion of assistance, not counting arms support or military support, since Sisi took power in 2014. He argues that Europe is enabling this model out of fear that more people would attempt to cross the Mediterranean if Egypt’s leaders decided not to actively prevent crossings.
In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants travelled to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. In response, many European countries ramped up funding to countries of origin and transit for economic development programs and border control in a bid to prevent more desperate people seeking refuge in the EU.
‘The logic in Egypt [was], if we improve roads [and] schools in poorer governorates where people are more prone to migrate, then they’ll stay,’ says Kelsey P. Norman, an expert on migration management aid in the MENA region at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities have largely stopped departures from its northern coast to Europe since 2016. ‘Once they showed that they could really stop boats leaving from Egypt towards Europe, they sat down with the Europeans and were like, “look – if you want us to continue to do this, we need some further assistance,”’ says Norman.
She says Egypt is now using ‘veiled threats’ in its negotiations with Europe to warn of a surge in migration if it stopped securing its borders or if its economy collapsed.
But Egypt’s fragile system, maintained through heavy militarization, debt and selective cooperation, carries many risks for Europe. The EU’s reliance on Egypt as a ‘stable partner’ hinges on a hazardous form of blackmail which comes at a human cost.
In December 24, the European Commission distributed billions to Egypt to ‘avert another migration crisis’ bypassing both the Parliament and the Council and drawing criticism from several European members of parliament (MEPs). SARA ELBASHIR
The multi billion dollar partnership signed by the EU and Egypt in March 2024 aimed to ‘boost Egypt’s faltering economy and avert another migration crisis in Europe’. The agreement included $938 million in targeted grants for migration, digitization, renewables and other sectors, $1.8 billion to support foreign direct investment, and $5.8 billion in macro-financial assistance (MFA) loans.
These loans were split into two tranches: the first, worth over $1 billion, was distributed in December, days after Egypt passed its new asylum law – a decision taken solely by the European Commission, bypassing both the Parliament and the Council and drawing criticism from several European members of parliament (MEPs).
New Internationalist has been given access to an unpublished internal communication from the Commission to the Parliament and Council that lists several ‘enduring’ challenges facing the Egyptian government including ‘restricted civic space, […] restrictions in freedom of expression and media freedom, arbitrary detention, poor detention conditions […] torture, extra-territorial repression [and] capital punishment’.
Yet, it also describes the mostly toothless conditions of the loans, with Egypt agreeing ‘to hold meaningful exchanges on human rights, breaking from the previous practice of limited and reluctant communication’. With no stringent political commitments, the hard conditions are instead tied to economic metrics that ignore a debt-driven model which prioritizes military control over basic public services.
This note also clashes with the wider public communications from the Commission, which presents the partnership as being based around mutual values and needs, and a positive political trajectory in Egypt.
New Internationalist spoke to several MEPs who have criticized this partnership for failing to safeguard human rights or open up the possibilities for a democratic opposition.
Dutch MEP Tineke Strik of the Greens/European Free Alliance and a rapporteur for Egypt says promising loans to a non-EU country without pre-conditions and with foggy future conditions is unprecedented within the bloc.
Italian MEP Danilo Della Valle also criticized the EU for ‘channelling European taxpayers’ money into dictatorships, corrupt administrations, and failed states in an attempt to outsource migration management’.
He told New Internationalist that ‘[Egypt’s] actions are not indicative of a country that upholds international law, yet the European Union has still chosen to formalize cooperation through a memorandum. This raises serious concerns about the EU’s commitment to human rights and accountability.’
The remaining $4.6 billion – expected to be distributed over two years – has been subject to fierce contest by both sides of the political aisle in the European Parliament. Left-wing parties want to attach clear conditions and targets to the MFA loans around opening up the country’s civic, political, and media spheres and improving the upkeep of human rights. A group of far-right and centre-right MEPs, led by the European People’s Party (EPP) which is considered an ally of Sisi, have suggested the MFA be used to support Egypt’s ‘responsibility to mitigate the effects of irregular migration’.
In response to several requests for information, the Commission reaffirmed that migration management was not part of formal conditions for the first tranche, and that only $230 million is directly tied to supporting migration related projects in the second tranche.
Still, it’s clear from the streets of Cairo that EU funding is helping to maintain the expansion of Sisi’s extractive and authoritarian regime, while doing little to improve the lives of desperate people fleeing war and disaster.
In Cairo, new highways and luxury developments tower above decaying infrastructure, and refugees remain excluded from much of public life. SARA ELBASHIR
‘This is really the big problem,’ says Strik. ‘[The Commission] doesn’t address that.’
Strik has spoken to several human rights defenders and advocacy groups who are not calling for direct EU intervention, but rather space to push change themselves,
‘They don’t expect the EU to overhaul the system here. They say, “We know we have to do it ourselves. But what we need is to have a bit more breathing room, to have a bit more possibility to influence what’s going on here,”’ she says.
Lotfy of the ECRF echoes his frustration with the lack of political agency to reshape the new asylum law in Egypt.
‘We put some guidelines about how this law should be drafted… But all this was completely neglected by the regime and the law was passed as it is in less than a couple of days,’ he said, adding that this exclusion has forced groups like his to focus their advocacy internationally.
While Egypt’s asylum law was ratified last December, it will only become fully operational in the coming months once the by-laws are passed. There are no clear signs whether internal and international lobbying will positively reshape these amendments to include protections for refugees like Fatima and her family. For now, all they can do is wait.
‘We are not okay,’ says Fatima. ‘We deserve safety too. We need real help, not silence.’
The production of this investigation is supported by a grant from the IJ4EU fund. The International Press Institute (IPI), the European Journalism Centre (EJC) and any other partners in the IJ4EU fund are not responsible for the content published and any use made out of it.