Egypt has a rich history of feminist activism, but progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and more (LGBTQI+) rights and women’s rights ‘remains elusive, characterized by fits and starts along a non-linear trajectory’ (Labastie 2024).
Although Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, regularly pays lip service to women’s rights, his government’s record is very poor, and it has been critiqued for ‘not tolerat(ing) any form of feminism but its own’ (EuroMed Rights 2021). Feminist and LGBTQI+ movements in Egypt are working within a civil society that is very tightly controlled, both by laws and the security forces (Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2024), who engage in human rights violations with impunity (Freedom House 2024).
Feminist and women’s rights organisations were at the forefront of a rapid growth of civil society following the Egyptian uprising in 2011 (Mohamed 2018). After the military coup in 2013, the government engaged in a sweeping crackdown on civil society (International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) 2024). Many feminist activists have been subject to travel bans, arrests, and asset freezes. The 2014 Law of Association forced ‘all civil society organisations, institutions and centres to register and gain governmental approval via the Ministry of Social Solidarity’ (Kamal 2016: 13). The 2015 Counterterrorism Law and the 2014 Terrorist Entities Law have been used to detain human rights defenders and civil society activists (HRW 2024). The 2019 NGO (non-governmental organisation) Law prohibits ‘political’ work or any work that undermines ‘national security’, as well as collaboration with foreign NGOs or experts, other than those with prior government approval (HRW 2024; Abuzaid 2019). It also allows for government surveillance and monitoring of organisations’ activities (HRW 2024). Political opposition groups struggle to function at all, due to tight security restrictions (Freedom House 2024; BBC 2023).
Although same-sex relations are not formally forbidden under Egyptian law, several legal provisions have been used by the authorities to prosecute gay men – for example, ‘debauchery’, ‘contempt of religion’, and ‘public morality’ (Grimm 2014). Egyptian security forces have also been known to use dating and social apps to entrap LGBTQI+ people (Shihab-Eldin 2023). Egyptian personal status law discriminates against women on a number of fronts, including on access to divorce, child guardianship (any decisions related to the child’s education, health, and assets is given to the father), and inheritance (HRW 2024). There are currently no laws that support the combating of domestic violence (ibid.). Incidents of sexual violence and harassment remain high, despite the 2014 criminalisation of the physical and verbal harassment of women (ibid.). The Egyptian manosphere (online spaces where men express misogynistic opinions) has become more organised under al-Sisi’s rule (Alsherif 2023), with attacks ranging from aggressive comments on a post, to threats of violence and rape made to the content creator (Samir 2020), or people close to her (El Asmar 2020). Authorities have used vague charges to prosecute women social media influencers, and accused them of violating ‘public morals’ or ‘undermining family values’ (HRW 2020). A law that criminalises sexual harassment was passed in 2014, with stricter penalties introduced in 2020, and 2023, but critics are sceptical as to its utility.
Parliament passed two critical laws in 2018, which eventually increased the state’s control on online, print, and broadcast media, namely Law No. 175 on combating Information Technology Crimes, and Law No. 180 on regulating the press and media. The former law is used to jail digital content creators, especially young women, and was most recently used to explicitly criminalise homosexuality for the first time. This change, from de facto criminalisation of homosexuality as ‘debauchery’ under the Anti-Sex Work Law to explicit criminalisation, will have a huge impact on the LGBTQI+ community (Noralla 2024). Moreover, Law No. 175 has been used to arrest a young woman who recounted her rape in a TikTok video, accused of violating public morals (Amnesty International 2020; El Asmar 2020; Samir 2020), and to convict an activist who published a video on sexual harassment (International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) 2022; Front Line Defenders (FLD) 2018). In 2022, Egypt witnessed an increase in femicides (Alhurra 2023; MCD 2023; Smith 2022). In many of these cases, when women had filed harassment complaints against their eventual killers, no action was taken by the relevant state authorities (ibid.).
Landscape of anti-rollback actors
This brief is based on a review of 13 feminist groups, founded during the third wave (1980s to 2011) and fourth wave (2011 onwards) of feminism in Egypt (Kamal 2016). There is a gap in academic, particularly English literature, so most of the information in this brief comes from grey literature, or organisations’ websites and reports. Many of the groups founded during the third wave have formal government registration and have been working for decades. They are used to collaborating with each other, with regional and transnational groups, and with global human rights platforms and mechanisms (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) 2016). Many of them hold consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Many new feminist groups that have mushroomed since the revolution (the fourth wave) name themselves as ‘initiatives’, to avoid formal registration (Mohamed 2018). They mainly focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and sexual violence, and a few focus on LGBTQI+ issues. Few of them formally register with the Ministry of Social Solidarity. Despite many of the fourth-wave groups operating online, there are a significant number that operate on a sub-national level, away from the capital.
Counter-rollback strategies
Actors countering state co-optation and crackdown on civil society organisations mostly belong to the older third-wave organisations. They are clearly concerned with localised knowledge production (NWF 2023), movement-building (NWF 2024), forming issue-based coalitions, and building new generations (Nazra 2018). Actors working on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues mostly use resistive strategies to document rollback, to frame and build an evidence base (discursive) (Abd El-Hameed 2017), and to provide legal services and training such as digital security workshops (practical) (Cairo 52 2024; EIPR 2019).
Practical strategies: In 2018, Human Rights Watch said the primary focus of Egyptian LGBT+ organisations was keeping themselves and LGBT+ people safe, both in terms of physical security and when online (HRW 2018: 29). NGOs supporting LGBT+ rights are also often required to work secretly and anonymously to avoid persecution (Dickson et al. 2021). Mesahat works in both Egypt and Sudan, providing tools, leadership training, and capacity building to empower and build the capacity of queer activists to reduce their risks of harm, provide safe spaces, and raise awareness about the importance of fighting against violence or discrimination.
Legal strategies are utilised by the Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute, which works regionally to provide legal services to marginalised groups. As well as pro bono legal representation, and consultations, it runs health services such as the trans clinic project.
Discursive strategies include documentation and media advocacy. To counter the lack of accurate data and statistics on gender-based crimes, organisations such as Edraak started their own crimes monitor, by collecting data from newspapers and media outlets (Edraak 2020). Organisations such as Mesahat run online campaigns; document violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC); and do oral history work in Egypt and Sudan (Mesahat n.d.). The Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute also raises awareness through workshops and media campaigns; it conducts advocacy research, creating guidelines for international and local partners, and runs the open-access MENA trans archive. The EIPR provides media and legal services, including on gender issues. It hosts a very active blog, in English and Arabic. It has worked with the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (Cewla), and other organisations and initiatives on the Crisis of Women and Girls’ Rights in Egypt, for the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in January 2025.
Online activism occupies an important space, with initiatives such as Assault Police, Speak Up or WhatWomenWant using social media platforms to critically address sexual harassment and sex education (Labastie 2024). The accumulative efforts of the consecutive campaigns against sexual violence crossed several boundaries, effectively turning activism against sexual violence into lobbying for sexual rights. One of the reasons for the success of anti-sexual harassment organising in Egypt is the active involvement of both men and women; and a framing that invoked social justice, rather than feminism.
Gaps and areas for future research/work
There is a gap in academic literature (and particularly literature in English) illustrating this landscape, and documenting the different strategies feminist groups are using, and the impact of those strategies. As already noted, most of the information in this brief comes from grey literature, or from organisations’ websites and reports. This gap could be overcome by commissioning studies, supporting documentation and archiving of the feminist movement, and translating Arabic grey literature from national and regional groups (Matoun 2023), and articles of the Egyptian feminist journal Tiba (NWF 2023).
It is difficult to find accurate data and statistics on gender-based crimes; the semi-annual reports issued by the Ministry of Interior are only available to security personnel (Tamkeen 2023). NGOs often complain about the lack of comprehensive data such as the Demographic and Health Survey (EIPR 2020). This lack of data hinders the ability to analyse changes in practices across various sociodemographic factors (EIPR 2023).
There are few studies examining the effectiveness of NGO coalitions in a closed civic space or comparing the role they have played over time. In general, there is a lot of oral undocumented information on the state clampdown and enforced restrictions, and the survival strategies that these groups are using to combat these conditions. There is also a gap in studying the closure of many significant initiatives, which could be for many reasons such as burnout, backlash, the closure of public space, or lack of funding.
Credits
This Country Brief was written by Manal Hassan. It was supported by the project Rapid Scoping Review – The Nature of Feminist and LGBT+ Movements in a Range of Selected Countries, funded by UK International Development from the UK government. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of IDS or the UK government’s official policies.
This is an Open Access brief distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
