Egypt - 2020 year-end report - Issues and Challenges

2020

Egypt is a signatory to the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the 1969 OAU Convention. A 1954 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Government of Egypt (GoE) and UNHCR remained in place, delegating to UNHCR functional responsibilities for all aspects related to registration, asylum documentation, refugee status determination (RSD), resettlement, voluntary repatriation, inter-agency coordination and assistance to the most vulnerable.

In 2020, a generally tolerant asylum environment continued to be observed in Egypt. However, protection challenges experienced by people of concern to UNHCR on the ground increased following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. UNHCR’s priority during 2020 was to mitigate COVID-19 effects on refugees and asylum-seekers.

The overall operational environment was heavily impacted by COVID-19, affecting the economy, and leaving many people of concern without a livelihood, more dependent on assistance, and exposed to house evictions and increased protection risks. Temporary closure of many government services, as well as adjustment of UNHCR’s activities to providing most services remotely, further affected refugees and asylum-seekers. The ongoing pandemic prevented UNHCR from full resumption of in-office activities. Safety measures were introduced to protect people of concern and staff. UNHCR’s in-office activities focused on critical protection services and indispensable services related to registration and resettlement, while other activities were provided remotely. The reduction of UNHCR’s registration services had a serious effect on the protection situation of refugees and asylum-seekers, creating a backlog of 54,386 cases (81,943 individuals) holding expired UNHCR documents, and 6,418 cases pending new registration. UNHCR developed a resumption plan for registration to cope with this situation.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, UNHCR advocated with the national authorities to exercise tolerance towards refugees and asylum-seekers whose identification documents had expired. The GoE pledged to be tolerant, yet many people of concern faced challenges and UNHCR recorded 543 people of concern detained for some period for having expired documents, many during the COVID situation.

MoUs have been established to provide refugees and asylum-seekers of all nationalities access to public healthcare on par with Egyptian nationals. However, the national health system suffers from gaps in the availability and the quality of services provided. People of concern were given access to COVID-19 treatment similar to nationals by the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP). Reported access challenges were addressed by the Office on a case by case basis.

Syrian, Sudanese, South Sudanese and Yemeni students continued to enjoy access to education in public schools. The Ministry of Education (MoE) allowed refugee and asylum-seeking children with expired IDs to be admitted in Egyptian schools in the academic year 2020/2021. Students of other nationalities continued to rely on informal education or private schools.

The pandemic slowed down the GoE’s drafting of a national asylum law. UNHCR encouraged efforts related to the drafting process and provided capacity-building. Based on its advisory role, UNHCR pledged to support the drafting by sharing its legal expertise to ensure that international standards are reflected. The authorities continued to consider the drafting as an exclusively national exercise and the draft law has not been shared with UNHCR.

UNHCR continued partnerships with national institutions such as the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) in developing joint “children on the move” standard operating procedures (SOPs) with UNICEF and IOM, as well as with the National Council for Women (NCW) in establishing a joint catering initiative for refugee and Egyptian women.

Egypt continued to manage mixed movements with scrutiny and to prevent irregular movement from the north coast. Access to asylum for persons in detention remained challenging.

Long-standing issues such as recognition of UNHCR’s role in support of Palestinian refugees remained unresolved, but the Office provided Palestinian refugees from Syria with medical and cash assistance through a partnership with UNRWA and the Egyptian Red Crescent.