This should come as a farce – Egypt has become chair of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) governing body, while back home it shoots unarmed migrants and blocks UNHCR's access to detainees seeking the agency's protection.
Egypt is notorious for shooting foreign nationals trying to cross into Israel. It also impedes the UN refugee agency's access to foreign nationals detained in Egypt who want to claim asylum.
Since July 2007, Egypt has shot down 85 unarmed migrants as they tried to cross from Egypt's Sinai desert into Israel. There have been no investigations into these shootings, carried out by the border guards attached to the Interior Ministry, and no one has been asked to explain. Since the beginning of 2010, border guards have shot and injured another 28 border crossers.
Egypt justifies its actions by insisting that Sinai is a sensitive military zone where arms trafficking and smuggling networks operate, and that its border guards fire warning shots before shooting at migrants. Evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Egypt does not have its own refugee status determination procedures and does not grant asylum to refugees in Egypt. It is, therefore, obliged to give UNHCR access to all foreign nationals who wish to claim asylum, including those who may be in detention, so the agency can determine the person’s possible refugee status. Egypt rarely plays ball.
It also pays scant regard to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1969 Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which Egypt is a party. Under the terms of those treaties, Egypt may not return anyone to a country where he or she faces a risk of persecution or torture.
Throwing all these treaties to the winds, Egypt has been deporting recognised refugees as well as groups of individuals likely to include asylum seekers who were unable to gain access to the local office of UNHCR. Egypt has denied the UNHCR, whose governing body it now heads, access to hundreds of detained migrants. Authorities, in fact, go to the extent of contacting the detainees’ embassies to help organise their deportation.
In June 2008, Egypt deported back 1,200 Eritreans, where many almost certainly faced detention, without first giving them access to UNHCR. And 740 of them were. In December 2008 and January 2009, Egypt forcibly returned another 45 asylum seekers to Eritrea. In mid-April 2008, Egypt deported 49 men to Juba in Southern Sudan, including 11 recognised refugees or persons with applications for asylum pending with the UNHCR.
[Based on materials provided by Human Rights Watch]
