Refugees in Egypt

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Sudanese children at the Notre Dame church in Cairo, January 2, 2006.

Until the terrible events of December 30, 2005, grabbed the headlines, few were aware that Egypt plays host to refugees from more than 30 countries. Early that morning, security forces using water cannons, pepper canisters, and sticks expelled some 3,000 Sudanese refugees from the Mustafa Mahmoud Park outside the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The peaceful protest of the refugees had begun on September 29, 2005. On December 22, the UNHCR requested the Government of Egypt (GoE) to disperse the protestors after its negotiations with the refugees had failed.

While the majority of refugees in Egypt are from all regions in the Sudan, there are also large numbers of Somalis, Eritreans, and Ethiopians, North Africans, and even more from Central and West Africa. Refugees from the Middle and Far East also seek asylum in Egypt. In addition, there are an estimated 70,000 Palestinians. Estimates for the number of refugees in Egypt vary from 500,000 to 3,000,000; however, because of a number of reasons, it is impossible to give an accurate figure.

There has been a UNHCR office in Cairo since 1954. The GoE ratified both the 1951 and the 1967 Organization of African Unity (OAU) Conventions⁽¹⁾ concerning refugees, and includes provision for providing asylum in its constitution. Provision was made in 1984⁽²⁾ for recognizing refugee status, but during the 1980s, the UNHCR refused to recognize those processed by the GoE.⁽³⁾ In the 1990s, the UNHCR itself assumed the responsibility for refugee status determination (RSD) under its 1950 mandate.⁽⁴⁾ The GoE "recognizes" those granted asylum by UNHCR by stamping residency in their refugee cards.⁽⁵⁾

Why don't we know how many refugees there are in Egypt? Many refugees have never even heard of the UNHCR, or cannot access its office. For example, one Ethiopian refugee found employment as a domestic worker in Alexandria; her employer held her passport and she could only leave the house on the days when the UNHCR offices are closed. Even if she had reached the UNHCR with her passport, her Egyptian visa had already expired.⁽⁶⁾

Visas to enter Egypt have only been required for Sudanese since 1995.⁽⁷⁾At this point, the UNHCR also started conducting RSD interviews for Sudanese. Given the wars that were raging there, the recognition rate of Sudanese applicants was staggeringly low. A refugee can appeal a negative decision; however, this does not constitute an independent interview by a different body. Moreover, the UNHCR refuses to provide reasons for rejection.⁽⁸⁾ The provision of Article I (2) includes refugees as those who flee war-torn countries. It was not applied in Egypt until 2003.⁽⁹⁾ As a result, tens of thousands of immigrants of all nationalities, who could not return because they had fled persecution and are refugees, have been forced to live in Egypt illegally.⁽¹⁰⁾

Significantly — to understand the current crisis in Cairo — in May 2004, the UNHCR stopped conducting individual interviews with newly arrived Sudanese refugees, instead issuing them yellow cards, indicating they were asylum seekers. The card grants the right to residency, but rights to medical services are limited to emergencies, and only about one thousand children of these asylum seekers are assisted in attending school (see below). Of course, once the UNHCR closed on September 29, 2005, when the protest began, no new arrival could register.

Moreover, the UNHCR only counts those it has recognized as refugees. In December 2005, these numbered only 18,870.⁽¹¹⁾ This number fails to account for unregistered refugees, those with yellow cards, and unrecognized refugees. This situation has a profound effect on funding. As a consequence of such a gross underestimation of need, the budgets of NGOs and the UNHCR suffer and no donors provide the GoE with money to expand its infrastructure to absorb refugees.

Life for Refugees in Cairo

Egyptian security forces clash with Sudanese refugees at the Mustafa Mahmoud Park outside the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Housing Refugees live in some 25 locations throughout greater Cairo,⁽¹²⁾ and some areas, such as Arba wa Nus, are squatter settlements that have little access to clean water, electricity, or sanitation.⁽¹³⁾ While most poor Egyptians live in rent-controlled housing, refugees must compete as all other foreigners on the private rental market. Overcrowding of flats is the consequence of the very high rents.

Education Long before the GoE ratified the 1951 Convention, it entered reservations to Articles 20 and 22-24 of the 1951 Convention, which grant the same rights to refugees as to nationals with regard to elementary education, public relief, terms of labor and social security, as well as Article 12 (1) relating to personal status (in short, anything that would financially encumber the GoE or, in the case of personal status law, contradict Shari`ah law). However, in 1982, when the GoE finally did ratify the Convention, none of these reservations were included in the gazette.⁽¹⁴⁾ As the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the GoE has ratified, supersedes any reservations on refugee education, a number of decrees have been passed that give refugee children of some nationalities the right to public education.⁽¹⁵⁾ But most refugee children enrolled in primary school are attending faith-based refugee schools that are not accredited even if they do follow the Egyptian curriculum.⁽¹⁶⁾

Opportunities for secondary, tertiary, and higher education are so limited to the point where they are almost non-existent; a few NGOs provide language and computer classes to a handful of refugees.

Livelihood With no permission to work, refugees, like poor Egyptians, are thrown into the informal economy.⁽¹⁷⁾ There are shortages in the labor market, domestic labor for women being the main one. But there are very few opportunities for refugee men to work — street hawking, construction, and farm labor are the main ones. A few get employed in factories, or in Internet cafes because their languages are needed to serve other refugee clients. All are subject to lower pay than Egyptians for doing the same work and to arrest for working illegally; hawkers are even more vulnerable.

Rather than being a burden, from the moment of arrival refugees are consumers, thereby contributing to the local economy. The burden of survival falls almost entirely on the refugees themselves. Many refugees also receive remittances from relatives abroad, sometimes even from Sudan. Western Union offices have sprung up in areas where refugees live. These have been estimated to account for several million US dollars every year.⁽¹⁸⁾ The UNHCR, through CARITAS, its implementing partner, gives derisory amounts of money only to the most vulnerable and recognized refugees, usually not even enough to pay rent, the first priority. Food is the first thing to be sacrificed; not surprisingly, malnutrition is rife among adults as well as children. Unrecognized refugees usually hide their children in their flats, increasing their risk of rickets.⁽¹⁹⁾ There are some faith-based groups that dispense basic food rations or a couple of Egyptian pounds to a few refugee families, but assistance is woefully inadequate.

Access to Health Services

Recognized refugees have access to health services through CARITAS on a cost-sharing basis. Refuge Egypt (based in All Saints Cathedral) provides health care to new arrivals for a two-year period, as long as they register within six months of their arrival. Few refugees learn about this service before it is too late. Moreover, Muslim refugees, probably the majority, are unlikely to feel comfortable getting help from a church. Theoretically, refugees can seek treatment in government facilities where costs are low. But receiving such medical care involves other obstacles; government hospitals may require identification documents which many "closed file" refugees do not have, or access may be limited due to real or perceived discrimination.

Resettlement

The bottom line of the protest, according to the UNHCR, was the demand by those in the Mustafa Mahmoud Park for "resettlement" to another country where their rights would be respected and where they would not face racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and abuse. America, Australia, and Canada are the main countries that have quotas for refugees recognized under the 1951 Convention to which refugees can be referred by the UNHCR in Egypt. Each country has its own criteria for acceptance and makes the final decision; since 9/11, decisions take much longer because of security checks.⁽²⁰⁾ The UNHCR has only met the quota once, in 2004, but even then, the number of refugees who have a chance to be resettled are minute. Refugees holding Yellow Cards, which, as noted, indicate that they are seeking asylum and their status has not been determined, have no hope.

Challenges to Co-Existence in Egypt

Since the vast majority of refugees will never be resettled, integration in Egypt is of great concern. Despite the rhetoric about Egypt and Sudan being "one country," the reality on the ground is quite different. The distinct Arabic dialects of Sudan can render even limited communication difficult, and a great many Southern Sudanese and Darfurians do not even speak an Arabic dialect. Most of the other refugees in Egypt come from countries where Arabic is not spoken.⁽²¹⁾

Cultural tensions have run high. Refugees report distrust of Egyptians, a feeling that is manifest in a rumor that organ theft is common in Egyptian hospitals. At the same time, the behavior of refugees sometimes exacerbates widespread xenophobia in Egypt. This goes far beyond petty quarrels between neighbors — refugees have been accused of drinking alcohol, venting their frustrations in public, and damaging property.

Racial discrimination is rampant in Egypt but is consistently denied, and there are no laws against incitement to racial hatred. Racism is expressed casually in Egypt through actions and racial slurs such as samara, chocolata, and honga bonga, but very often it also involves brutal physical attacks.

Sexual harassment is ubiquitous; in Egypt it affects all women. The National Council for Women, among other groups, has begun a campaign against it. However, sometimes black women are regarded as prostitutes and are particularly vulnerable. Because they are working illegally, domestic and other refugee workers are usually underpaid and often accused of theft and handed over to the police.

Rumors are rife within poor Egyptian society about the benefits that refugees receive from NGOs and the UNHCR, and Egyptians deeply resent those who manage to get resettled. Indeed, many Egyptians (and other refugees) believe that the protestors benefited financially from staying in the Mustafa Mahmoud Park.

Conclusion

The three months sit-in demonstration that ended on December 30 is only the most recent and most visible example of a situation that has been brooding for years. Egypt should be commended for its enormous patience in allowing the refugees to express their grievances, and for so long. The UNHCR's culpability in asking for the action that took place on December 30 aside, the GoE is ultimately responsible for refugees, whether or not it has delegated its role to this international body with the refugee mandate. Egypt urgently requires domestic legislation that includes granting refugees their human rights. Most urgently, it requires leadership from the very top to increase all Egyptians' understanding of their obligations under the conventions to extend the hospitality, for which Egypt is so well-known, to refugees too.

Barbara Harrell-Bond is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Programme, American University in Cairo. She was the founder/director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (1982-1996). In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for her contribution to refugee studies. She is author of Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees and co-author with Guglielmo Verdirame of Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, published in 2005.

(1) And a Memorandum of Agreement with the GoE since that date which has never been revised.

(2) Presidential Decree No. 188, 1984.

(3) Instead of issuing a refugee card, the GoE stamped the residency permission in the recognized refugee’s passport. If a refugee had no passport, he or she could be issued a Convention Travel Document.

(4) The UNHCR is involved in RSD in more than 60 countries. See www.rsdwatch.org for a critique of its procedures.

(5) A complicated process that necessitates lists being forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then on to the Mugamma (building in Cairo containing offices for residency and citizenship). Refugees must visit both offices, sometimes many times, in order to obtain the stamp.

(6) This woman, after four years, finally got the phone number of AMERA, an NGO that provides pro bono legal aid for refugees, and it took up her case.

(7) This was the date of the attempt to assassinate President Mubarak for which Sudanese were allegedly responsible. Evidence that the GoE is trying to deal in a principled way with the terrible aftermath of the December 30, 2005, expulsion of the protestors outside the UNHCR office, is that a refugee was released on January 3, 2006, from the Abu Zaabal Detention Center even though his UNHCR file was "closed" because he had arrived in Egypt in 1993!

(8) After considerable criticism, the UNHCR attaches a code to the rejection listed on its notice board, e.g. LOC, Lack of Credibility. A lawyer attempting to write an appeal needs a crystal ball.

(9) It was not until 2003 that UNHCR "remembered" that the GoE was party to the OAU Convention. In Article I (1), it incorporates the definition of a refugee from the 1951 Convention and adds para. 2: "The term refugee shall apply to every person who owing external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence to seek refugee in another place outside his country of origin or nationality."

(10) See Grabska, K. 2005. "Living on the Margins: The Analysis of the Livelihood Strategies of Sudanese Refugees with Closed Files in Egypt." Working paper No. 6, Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program, American University in Cairo.

(11) Statistics provided by the UNHCR Cairo office on January 2, 2006.

(12) Some live in Alexandria and a few manage to find employment in agriculture and the tourist industry and are scattered around Egypt.

(13) Arba wa Nus is inhabited by equally poor Egyptians who have been displaced from rural Egypt by "development" projects or poverty.

(14) That is, included in the published law which renders it implemented. However, no one, not even the UNHCR, has sought to remedy the extant situation and everyone concerned with refugees behaves as though they do not have these rights which were "reserved" earlier.

(15) There are enormous documentary obstacles to refugee children enrolling in a public school. See Badawy, T. 2005. "The Right of Refugee Children to Education in Egypt." unpubl. mss.

(16) Ibid.

(17) With the exception of PLO members and those who worked in the administration in Gaza, Palestinians must have work permits or evidence that they are in school to get their travel documents renewed. See Oroub, A. 2003. "The Unprotected Palestinians of Egypt: An Investigation of Livelihoods and Coping Strategies." unpubl. mss. Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program, American University in Cairo.

(18) See Al Sharmani 2003. "Livelihood and Identity Constructions of Somali Refugees in Cairo." FMRS Working paper No ? and Grabska, K. 2005 "Living on the Margins: The Analysis of the Livelihood Strategies of Sudanese Refugees with Closed Files in Egypt." Working paper No. 6, Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program, American University in Cairo.

(19) Ironically, rickets is a ubiquitous disease in Cairo "where the sun always shines," because there are few places for children to play in this busy city. Refugees also suffer high rates of tuberculosis as a result of overcrowding.

(20) Although Canada and Australia also allow for private sponsorship.

(21) See Calvani, D. 2003. "Initial Overview of the Linguistic Diversity of Refugee Communities in Cairo." Working Paper No. 4, Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program, American University in Cairo.