ASIL Programs > Career Development > Arthur C. Helton Fellowship > Helton Fellowship Profiles and Reflections > 2009 ASIL Helton Fellows > ASIL Helton Fellowship Reflections

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Cairo, Egypt

By Bahaa Ezzelarab, 2009 Arthur C. Helton Fellow

            In applying for an internship with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), I was drawn to the holistic approach the organization takes to human rights. Therefore, I was glad to experience that the NGO’s strategy reflected a conviction of the interconnectedness of different “generations” of rights. More importantly, the internship gave me a preliminary overview of the social and political difficulties facing human rights NGOs and the strategic choices and alliances they make to support their causes.

EIPR accomplishes its work with three main tools: strategic litigation, reports, and social campaigns. These tools are used to address specific human rights issues on which the organization has developed expertise through its different programs, such as the right to freedom of belief and religion, the right to health, and the right to bodily integrity and sexual and reproductive health. EIPR lawyers undertake miscellaneous cases to try and change or develop certain concepts in Egyptian jurisprudence, such as jurisprudence on equality and discrimination. These cases argue Egyptian Law as well as international human rights law and comparative jurisprudence. A main obstacle, however, is the shortage of lawyers either willing or able to engage with comparative jurisprudence, and the shortage of lawyers interested in human rights litigation at all.

Although I originally intended to work with EIPR’s legal team on cases related to economic and social rights in Egypt, I spent the first month of my internship working on a completely different project due to the organization’s evolving needs. During this time, I co-wrote a report on juvenile justice in Egypt, which should become part of a larger report commissioned by the British Institute for International and Comparative Law (BIICL) on juvenile justice in the Muslim world. Though I had a preliminary understanding of potential obstacles, I was shocked with the difficulty of conducting legal research, especially when it related to a marginalized sector of the society. The amount of governmental red-tape procedures I encountered rendered it virtually impossible to conduct serious legal research on this issue. For example, we were told by two Child Court judges that we could not gain access to juvenile courts or to records of case law.

During the second stage of my internship, EIPR asked me to write a research paper on international human rights jurisprudence on the right to receive information and to do a survey of comparative jurisprudence on the issue. This research will be used as part of a memorandum or a statement of claims for a case EIPR will file against the Ministry of Interior as a result of the Ministry’s decision to cease the publishing of a “General Security Report.” This report was systematically published until the past year, and it included information about the number and types of crimes in Egypt, the locales with higher rates of crimes, percentages of the different sentences issued by the courts, etc. EIPR intends to use this case as a platform for launching several other cases relating to the right to receive information. This will include a campaign—and possibly a case—on the right to receive information on new contracts and agreements the Ministry of Health is signing with foreign companies to restructure the health insurance system. This has been one of the main focuses of EIPR, and in writing my research on comparative jurisprudence, I was asked to be mindful of the larger questions this case attempts to address.

Since EIPR’s work includes several topics that are considered controversial in the social context in which it operates, my experience introduced me to the intersection between governmental violation of human rights and societal violation of the same rights by dominant groups, whether in number or in political power. It was interesting to note how the strategies used by a human rights group differ according to the type of violation it attempts to address. Thus, EIPR’s leadership would emphasize the virtues of cooperating with the Ministry of Health on several issues and avoiding direct confrontations in the courts except when there was no alternative. However, with regard to the Ministry of Interior, the EIPR demonstrated a clear readiness and desire to confront it in courts and to expose its human rights violations. To a certain extent, this differential treatment could be read as highlighting one difference between economic and social rights, where the officials in charge might be trying to fulfill their duties and failing in certain respects due to a lack of vision or information, while the State stands as the main antagonist to civil and political rights. However, the more likely interpretation may be simply that new Ministry of Health officials were more amenable to discussion and NGO involvement.