The Egyptian Front for Human Rights stated that the downgrading of Egypt’s NCHR to B status is an important step in recognizing the lack of independence of the NCHR, as well as its complicity in grave human rights abuses in Egypt. This decision resulted from the Egyptian Front’s participation in providing the SCA, individually and jointly with other organizations, with information exposing the NCHR’s role in covering up and whitewashing violations carried out by the Egyptian authorities. The NCHR failed to effectively exercise its mandate to examine numerous violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, detention conditions, the situation of HRDs, fair trial rights, and due process. There has been no substantial reporting, assessment, or examination of these violations.
Earlier, during the SCA’s second session of 2023, the committee decided to “defer consideration of the NCHR based on concerns raised by third-party submissions on its lack of effectiveness in dealing with serious human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, conditions of detention and detainees, the situation of human rights defenders, fair trial rights, and due process, as well as freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association.” The SCA also expressed concern about the lack of information on the categories of rights violations and the type of complaints handled.
The Egyptian Front for Human Rights, in its individual report to the SCA committee on June 1, 2024, stated that it does not consider the Egyptian National Council to be an independent entity compliant with the Paris Principles. Instead, the Council has failed to fulfill its mandate to uphold human rights. It has demonstrated a clear lack of impartiality toward the Egyptian authorities, often covering up numerous human rights violations in its reports and media appearances.
EFHR also stated that according to its documentation, hundreds of complaints have been submitted to the NCHR, including cases of enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, torture, and poor detention conditions to no avail. In 2020, the Council stated that findings of the UN Committee against Torture, according to which torture was ‘systematic’ in Egypt, were a ‘politicised categorisation’ seeking to ‘undermine the efforts of the government’. In the first quarter of 2024, a human rights organization monitored 10 incidents of death in custody, 15 incidents of torture and 44 incidents of medical negligence with no avail from the NCHR. Also, The NCHR didn’t respond to the recent crackdown on citizens who criticize the economic conditions who have been accused under State Security Cases, where individuals were arrested in December 2023 for posting satirical videos on TikTok criticizing President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s policies for the economic downturn and rising food costs. The NCHR also didn’t take action regarding the repeated detention “rotation” of the HRD Hoda Abel Moenim in October 2023, who faced malicious accusations and was recycled into a case immediately after completing her 5-year prison sentence in Case No. 1552 of 2018, Supreme State Security Emergency, known in the media as the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms case, and she was further accused under the same charges of joining a terrorist group.