Black Box Egypt: Egypt’s Opaque Detention and Deportation Practice against Refugees

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In blatant violation of international refugee and human rights conventions, Egyptian authorities continue their crackdown against refugees and people on the move. While deportations of Eritrean nationals have apparently been expanded significantly since 2021, countless people on the move are currently detained in Egypt in disastrous conditions and without access to legal counsel. The regime now responds to an EU demand by drafting an asylum law. But by doing so, Cairo also pursues its very own goals.

In November 2021 Ylva Johansson, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, travelled to Cairo for the third session of the EU-Egypt Migration Dialogue, launched in 2017, to meet with senior government officials. On that occasion, she explicitly praised Egypt’s actions against irregular migration,[1] and even labelled the country as “a key partner for the EU”. Therefore, Brussels wants to deepen its migration cooperation with Cairo and provide additional financial aid, the Commissioner announced.[2]

Almost simultaneously to Johansson’s Cairo visit, Egypt’s Ministry of Interior deported seven asylum seekers to the military dictatorship of Eritrea.[3] Western embassies reportedly lobbied behind closed doors for the halting of the deportation. However, neither the EU nor individual European states had publicly addressed this clear violation of the 1951 Geneva Convention, which Egypt is a signatory to.

For years, criticism of Egypt’s systematic human rights crimes against its own population has mostly only been voiced behind closed doors by European governments or very quietly. Human rights violations against Egypt-based refugees, however, are barely a matter of concern at a diplomatic level. Cairo has, de facto, a free hand in dealing with refugees. Yet, both Egypt and European states have a vital interest in maintaining and even expanding the border control regime in the region.

Immediately after the devastating 2016 shipwreck off the coast of the Mediterranean city of Rashid,[4] in which more than 300 people are believed to have drowned, the regime closed maritime borders. Ever since, almost no boat has, within the scope of irregular migration, set sail from the country’s coast towards Europe. Already at that time, the 2016 EU-Turkey deal served as a blueprint for Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to define Cairo’s future approach towards Europe. The regime’s goals in striking a similar deal are obvious: preventing criticism of human rights violations; and to be redeemed on the international stage after Sisi’s bloody 2013 takeover.[5]

Six years later, it can be stated that this strategy has paid off. Public criticism of the Cairo regime is even more restrained, while European states and Egypt have massively expanded their cooperation on migration. The Rashid disaster and the swift closure of the country’s maritime borders have paved the way for Sisi to present his regime as a reliable and effective partner regarding border control policies. Ever since, Europe’s security and development support for Egypt has also been extended in the context of migration movements in East and North Africa, and the relentlessly invoked “migration potential”[6] of the Egyptian society.[7] At an EU level, the police authorities Europol and CEPOL (Agency for Law Enforcement Training), and the border control agency Frontex[8] are cooperating indirectly with Egypt, whereas the EU Agency for Asylum (EUAA, formerly European Asylum Support Office) is gradually expanding its activities in Egypt. Meanwhile, European states have also increased cooperation with Egypt on a bilateral level since 2016: France delivered heavy military equipment such as jets and warships, while Italy[9] and Germany[10] have significantly intensified their bilateral development aid and police cooperation with Cairo.

Yet, the regime is also pursuing its very own goals by its increasingly rigorous migration policy. “Egypt is by no means a passive object of the EU’s border externalization”, Gerda Heck, a professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC), tells the RLS. On the border to Libya, for example, its own security interests play a considerable role. It is equally important for the regime to exert a maximum degree of control over its borders and the people living in the country—whether Egyptian or not—namely without interference from the UN or other actors.

This is one reason why immigrants are often kept in an all-embracing state of uncertainty. A key element of this population and migration control is a partly systematic, partly arbitrary detention and deportation practice against refugees and people on the move. However, this practice is by no means new, but is rather the consistent continuation of a policy that has already been pursued for years.

Thousands or even tens of thousands of people are arrested at Egypt’s borders every year and often held indefinitely in administrative detention. While the military infrequently publishes figures on people arrested at the borders, Egypt is a downright black box regarding deportations. Official statistics do not exist, and neither civil society nor the media are able to grasp official practices in their entirety, given the sensitivity of the issue and the lack of transparency by the Ministry of Interior and the army. Nevertheless, this report attempts to outline some elements of the Egyptian military regime’s migration and border control policy, and to present a more nuanced picture in contrast to the image of a supposedly compliant Egypt that acts only at the behest of Europe in migration matters.[11]

[1]    Ylva Johansson, Tweet, Twitter, 15 November 2021, available at https://twitter.com/YlvaJohansson/status/1460168931537215490. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[2]    Ylva Johansson, Tweet, Twitter, 15 November 2021, available at https://twitter.com/ylvajohansson/status/1460197300714803205. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[3]    See: “Stop the crime of forced deportation against seven Eritrean asylum seekers”, Refugees Platform in Egypt, 17 November 2021, https://rpegy.org/en/stop-the-crime-of-forced-deportation-against-seven-eritrean-asylum-seekers/, accessed on 30 March 2022.

[4]     See: Tom Rollins and Sofian Philip Naceur, “Egypt‘s Migration Trade with Egypt”, Mada Masr, 1 February 2017, available at https://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/02/01/feature/politics/europes-migration-trade-with-egypt/. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[5]     See: “All According to Plan”, Human Rights Watch, 12 August 2014, available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/08/12/all-according-plan/raba-massacre-and-mass-killings-protesters-egypt. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[6]      Egypt‘s population has grown from 83 million in 2010 to 104 million in 2022. Greater Cairo alone now has about 30 million inhabitants. The country‘s poverty rate is vast, and has additionally grown significantly since the 2016 neoliberal structural adjustment programme and the Covid-19 pandemic, and, according to the government, stands at about 30 percent of the population. In view of such data and from the EU’s point of view, Egypt must be kept economically and politically stable at all costs.

[7]       See: Council of the European Union: Discussion Paper 6135/22, 18 February 2022, available at https://migration-control.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/st06135.en22.pdf. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[8]       See: EU Commission: Reply to a parliamentary inquiry E-002474/2019, 28 October 2019, available at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2019-002474-ASW_EN.html. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[9]        See: Sara Prestianni, “Security and Migration”, ARCI, May 2019, available at https://www.arci.it/app/uploads/2019/05/report-2019-inglese-normal.pdf. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[10]       See: Sofian Philip Naceur, An “Accessory to Repression”? Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, March 2018, available at https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Artikel/03-18_Online-Publ_accessory_to_repression.pdf. Last accessed on 30 March 2022.

[11]        Note: This report is based on more than 50 interviews conducted between September 2020 and March 2022 with refugees, people on the move, activists, lawyers, and representatives of civil society organizations. Most interviewees requested to remain anonymous.