Who Asked Them Anyway? Rights, Policies and Wellbeing of Refugees in Egypt

This 60-page research paper explores policies and rights related to refugees in Egypt. It was developed as part of the Development Research Centre on Migration, Poverty and Globalization, funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), and carried out by the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies programme (FMRS) at the American University in Cairo between February and June 2005. The researchers looked at the domestic policy environment as shaped by national and international political, social, and economic forces. The research considered the actors, forces, and conditions which determine policy in all its stages from how it is devised, to how it is applied, and analysed how policy may be subverted or rendered ineffectual. The research found that for “bottom-up” and rights-based approaches to succeed, there has to be a clearer understanding of who is responsible for upholding and protecting refugee rights. It was found that lack of awareness and good information about these rights resulted from the need for stronger communication.

The research found that refugees do not have a good understanding of their rights in Egypt. Several reasons were mentioned by refugees and refugee groups interviewed for the research. First, many pointed out the low level of education among refugee populations, especially Southern Sudanese, due to constant movement and multiple displacements. Second, refugees generally use informal sources of information such as family, friends, or community members, who are often unreliable, as they lack proper information themselves. Also, organisations providing assistance to refugees focus mainly on services tailored towards the portion of the refugee population who will be repatriating and offer little practical advice to help people adjust to life in Egypt. There is also a dearth of organisations able to provide proper legal advice and services and explain rights of refugees in the host community.

Although many of the refugee-based organisations interviewed for the research had some understanding of policies affecting refugees in Egypt, most of them did not have a clear picture of the specifics. A concern expressed by many refugees was access to proper information regarding rights of refugees and policies affecting them. Several members of refugee organisations expressed their disappointment with the restricted access to information. Refugees claim that the current sources of information on rights produced by organisations, such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), are not adequately meeting the needs of the community. For example, a newsletter dealt only with issues around the Sudanese repatriation process; whereas the UNHCR information booklet was described as not easily understood by refugees, due to illiteracy and lack of education.

The research suggests that awareness raising about rights of refugees in the host community should also be carried out among the host population. Such an approach would increase the recognition of refugees and their rights among the locals and ease tensions between the two communities. The current image of refugees perpetuated by the local press often presents them as a burden on society and a source of serious social problems. The popular daily newspaper Al-Ahram and the weekly magazine Ros al Yusif published editorials, special reports, and letters to the editor that speak of the “sea” of illegal African migrants “flooding” Egyptian society and “robbing” its youth of employment. African migrants have also been represented in such printed media as drug dealers and as a threat to the moral values of Egyptian society.

The research also suggests that for a rights-based approach to be truly functional, primary stakeholders, i.e. refugees, need to be involved in the decision-making process. Although there is growing consensus that such an approach would strengthen the understanding of causes and consequences of displacement, assessing needs and identifying the most vulnerable populations, and creating sustainable projects that would lead to greater refugee self-reliance, the mainstreaming of these participatory approaches into the humanitarian sector has proven to be a failure for the most part, according to this research.

This report offers several recommendations for more effective implementation of a rights-based approach in Egypt:

• direct dialogue with refugees and all actors in the refugee system in Egypt is crucial;
• clear national structures of responsibility are needed to ensure access to justice for refugees;
• the language of “dependency” and “vulnerability” must be removed from the operational programming of UNHCR and other agencies;
• everyone involved in making and implementing refugee policy in Egypt must understand the meaning of ‘rights-based’ approaches, and training should be provided;
• refugees’ own perceptions of rights should be incorporated into the policy process; and
• a more integrative approach should channel assistance to refugees through development aid to all poor Egyptians.

The report concludes that although rights-based programming with the emphasis on a developmental approach in policies towards refugees has been supported theoretically by most of the actors, “the actual implementation of this strand of thought remains questionable. The coordination required between the many actors involved in the process, the different power positions enjoyed by each group, the structural constraints and ingrained top-down processes in the bureaucracies, the issues of national and institutional self-interest, and the transient nature of refugee populations pose great challenges to the operationalisation of bottom-up approaches.


Although theoretically and rationally necessary, the question still remains whether bottom-up approaches to policy-making are logistically and politically feasible.”