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Cairo – ِAugust 18th– 2025
A joint report prepared by the Refugees Platform in Egypt (RPE) and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has revealed that security authorities in Egypt have consistently engaged in widespread violations of the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, and insist on breaching the state’s commitment to the principle of “non-refoulement” for refugees and asylum seekers, in the absence of legal safeguards and the growing reliance on heavy-handed security measures in the state approach to refugee issues.
RPE and EIPR documented these violations, which both organisations monitored from the end of 2023 until the first quarter of the current year 2025, in the August 18th report entitled: “The Collapse of Egypt’s Protection for Refugees: Widespread Systematic Violations of the Principle of Non-Refoulement and the Right to Asylum.”
The report documents a dangerous shift in the Egyptian government’s treatment of refugees. Egypt has historically hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighbouring countries, and this responsibility grew significantly from 2023 due to the devastating war in Sudan. However, the Egyptian authorities have recently sought to establish a non-entrée regime that severely restricts access to Egyptian territory, and then started adopting targeted policies aimed at arresting and deporting those who managed to arrive in Egypt seeking legal protection from the Egyptian state. The report found that these policies appear designed to bolster a new impression of Egypt as “no longer a safe place for refugees and those fleeing wars and persecution.” These policies include mass arrest campaigns, organised and nationwide forced deportations without judicial review and with virtually no due process, as well as raids on the homes of refugees or asylum seekers, and racial targeting in random checks and street round-ups based on skin colour or residential neighbourhood. Many of these practices have no precedent – especially in terms of the scale and magnitude – in Egypt’s history as a country that was relatively open to refugees.
These raids and round-ups – which in a few cases involved up to one hundred people in a single campaign – have led to numerous cases of detention and subsequent deportation. Many of the refugees arrested were carrying legal documents from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), yet this did not prevent the authorities from detaining and deporting them after confiscating their UNHCR documents. The report documents the spread of this security practice since 2024, where the authorities deported refugees and asylum seekers who were in possession of legal documents, or referred them to court on charges related to unlawful presence in Egypt, after confiscating papers proving their legal status – rendering them undocumented.
In some cases, the authorities raided the homes of refugees and asylum seekers in districts known for hosting large numbers of them – another practice that is almost entirely novel to Egyptian state policy vis-a-vis refugee communities.
The report also records patterns of violations that have emerged through the examination of dozens of cases, including the use of so-called “voluntary return” as a cover-up for forced return, as well as causing family separation by deporting children or their relatives, detaining refugees registered with UNHCR while refusing to acknowledge their status; and deporting many of those detained without providing any legal safeguards or concern for the risk of persecution they might face. This included knowingly deporting people to third countries other than their countries of origin where they were at even more serious risk.
The report is based on field documentation, interviews with refugees, lawyers and civil society organisations, as well as a review of official documents issued by the Egyptian government and the UNHCR, and testimonies from victims of violations and their families. It also includes a legal analysis of laws, policies, and emerging executive practices on the ground.
The two organisations warn of the potentially grave consequences if the flawed new Asylum Law No. 164 of 2024 is finally operationalised, especially with the absence of any provisions addressing the transition from the existing legal system to the new one. The current wording of the law grants the executive authority broad powers to exclude, deny protection and deport protected refugees; undermines the centrality of the principle of non-refoulement, and entrenches a legal and administrative environment that makes access to protection and residency extremely difficult. This may exacerbate the issues and patterns observed over the past two years, during which this unprecedented shift in state policies towards refugees and migrants in general started to take shape.
The report also highlights the difficulty asylum seekers face in reaching Egyptian territory or UNHCR offices to register, due to administrative decisions, security restrictions, and punitive treatment, particularly towards those fleeing the war in Sudan. This pushes refugees to resort to irregular entry, with accompanying life-threatening risks. Between February and August 2024, the two organisations as well as other local protection actors recorded dozens of incidents that resulted in the death of 19 and injury of 165 Sudanese migrants, in addition to their subjection to widespread arrest campaigns, even when in possession of legal documents.
The most alarming pattern that emerges from the analysis is that these detention and deportation operations, that do not differentiate between recognised and registered refugees and anyone else; can only be described as systematic and deliberate measures that stem from a higher policy to strip refugees of protection and make them feel unsafe in the host country. The result of this was separation of families, the destruction of lives of those fleeing conflict who end up in detention or taking increasingly dangerous routes to Egypt or in order to leave Egypt through Libya. Local actors in the protection field documented the deportation of more than 20,000 refugees to Sudan in 2024 alone – seven times the number deported in 2023 – confirming the radical shift in official policy towards refugee communities.
Despite the seriousness of these violations, the report notes the UNHCR’s failure to fulfil its monitoring and protection role, limiting itself to official statements and diplomatic remarks, while the European Union continues to provide macrofinancial and political support to the Egyptian government, including on migration management, without clear conditions for refugee protection.
The two organisations finally make some urgent recommendations to the Egyptian government, including:
– An immediate halt to forced returns, especially to Sudan, to which the UNHCR prohibits returning refugees under any circumstances.
– The unconditional release of all arbitrarily detained refugees and asylum seekers.
– Postponing the implementation of the new asylum law and redrafting some of its key provisions to fall in line with international standards and with the basic tenets of the 1951 convention.
– Ensuring fair access to registration processes and legal residency.
-Refraining from criminalising refugees based on irregular entry and complying with Egyptian laws such as Law No.82/2016 which stipulate that smuggled refugees should be treated as victims rather than culpable.
– Respecting Egypt’s international obligations, foremost among them the 1951 Refugee Convention, acknowledging protection already granted under the current UNHCR-led system and respecting judicial rulings in cases where refugees are defendants.
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