#EndReprisals

Mohamed El-Baqer is director of the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms. The Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms is a non-governmental organisation established in 2014 to uphold and promote the rights of students, refugees, and migrants.

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State’s development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations’ previous engagement in the country’s Universal Public Review in 2014.

Naâma Asfari is a Sahrawi human rights defender who has campaigned for the self-determination of Western Sahara. The territory is a former Spanish colony that remains under Moroccan occupation despite a 1992 UN ruling for a referendum on independence, which has yet to be complied with.

In a heavily criticised trial held in 2013, Asfari was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his alleged involvement in the murder of 11 Moroccan soldiers during a 2010 operation that saw the brutal dismantling of a large camp set up in Gdim Izik by Sahrawi civil society organisations to protest against Morocco's occupation of the region.

Organic Farming for Gorillas (OFFGO), is an organisation founded in September 2015 that aims to support the practices and rights of traditional farming and nomadic livestock communities in the North West Region of Cameroon.

In May 2019, Special Procedures mandate holders expressed concern about a defamation campaign and acts of reprisals against OFFGO, who had published information about abuses and disputes linked to land and business operations in Cameroon.

The defamation campaign began in 2015, following OFFGO's publication of a report describing how communities were facing 'systematic intimidation and harassment by local administrative and judicial authorities' and denouncing a 'serious case of alleged land grabbing by a tea and cattle corporation.'

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State’s development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations’ previous engagement in the country’s Universal Public Review in 2014.

Several members of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) were arrested in 2018 under charges including ‘providing international entities with false news’. The ECRF is a Cairo-based organisation that provides legal advice to families of victims of enforced disappearance and documents human rights violations. It has engaged with UN mechanisms.