“Honestly, what I want is to be in Sharm el-Sheikh and just scream,” said Amr Magdi of Human Rights Watch. Like dozens of other prominent human rights defenders, researchers and environmentalists, Magdi has been unable to attend Cop27 as he is exiled from Egypt because of his work.
“I just want to tell everyone about the injustice happening in Egypt. I can’t do it personally and I’m trying to do it with my work. I’m even helping others who are able to travel there to do this,” he said.
Many Egyptian environmentalists, human rights defenders, researchers and activists exiled from their country are watching protests and the vanishingly rare opportunity to discuss civil rights in Sharm el-Sheikh from afar, as returning would put them at risk of detention.
The hundreds of exiles combined with the estimated 65,000 political prisoners inside Egypt’s sprawling detention systemand the Egyptian government’s attempt to bar dozens of domestic civil society groups means many voices from Egypt are excluded from the conference.
Another activist, who asked to remain anonymous, also spoke of fears that a return meant instant arrest. “If you go back, you’re going to get arrested, or if not then you’ll be placed under a travel ban so you can’t leave Egypt and continue your life or work,” she said.
The news that Egypt would host Cop27 drew surprise, rage, and sometimes guilt at being unable to attend from the activists and researchers interviewed. “My first thought was that … Egypt should not be hosting a conference like this, where civil society pressure and participation are such an essential ingredient,” said the activist.
She pointed to the Egyptian authorities’ use of prison to silence dissenting voices, notably British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who began a water strike on the day Cop27 began.
“What’s being missed isn’t just activists in exile, it’s that our best minds are dying in prison,” she said. “It’s these minds that we need for the solutions to the climate crisis, but the Egyptian state is choosing to kill them in prison.”
The conference in Sharm el-Sheikh follows an almost- decade-long crackdown on civil society in Egypt that has targeted almost every form of independent organising, and driven many activists and researchers overseas. Prominent organisations working on civil rights, including climate justice, have been targeted with raids, shutdowns and arrests. The Egyptian authorities have banned non-governmental organisations receiving funding from abroad and strangled their domestic resources, while major heads of prominent civil society groups have been banned from travel and their bank accounts frozen. Multiple researchers have been arrested on arrival in Egyptian airports after returning home for family visits when they lived and studied abroad.
“Even one activist in jail is an intimidation to all against speaking up, but it’s thousands over the years placed in inhumane detention conditions, some facing torture, with other colleagues placed on travel ban lists or finding their assets frozen,” said Magdi.
Threats from the Egyptian security services or their outriders in the country’s media have encompassed both well known international rights groups and individuals. Magdi remembers a prominent television anchor threatening his life after Human Rights Watch published a report about possible war crimes in northern Sinai. “Live on television he said I will be brought back to Egypt and executed,” he said. Major state outlets have labelled him a terrorist for his human rights work, he added.
The former MP Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, nephew of Egypt’s former president, recently called for Egypt’s youth to return to the country. Hussein Baoumi of Amnesty International was exactly the kind of person Sadat’s call was supposed to resonate with, but he will also be staying away.
“The Egyptian authorities are continuing to arrest opponents and critics, and subject human rights defenders to travel bans,” he said. “They don’t want us back home.”
Baoumi pointed out that the next conference will be in the United Arab Emirates, another country with a troubled record on dissent. The UAE has also aided the Egyptian authorities in deporting Egyptian nationals back to Egypt in the past, raising concerns that the same activists forced to miss Cop27 will have to do the same thing for Cop28.
“From our point of view as Amnesty International we have to engage on the issue of climate, as there’s no time,” said Baoumi. “Even if the Cop is being held in a repressive state, it’s important to go to force the international community to recognise civil society engagement.”
