A group of 18 Eritrean refugees, who have been arbitrarily detained in Egypt, are in grave danger of deportation, and there are plans to remove eight members of the group on Saturday, 23rd October 2021, to the very country they fled from.
In October 2019, a group of 18 refugees, aged between 2 to 70, who had fled Eritrea and entered Egypt via Sudan seeking protection, were jailed in Egypt. The UNHCR is not allowed to register refugees who are detained there, so they had no opportunity to register their claims for asylum. The refugees have been held in Aluqsur prison, where they have been suffering from lack of medical attention.
The Eritrean Embassy in Cairo has cooperated with Egyptian authorities and has issued travel documents in order to forcibly return these refugees to Eritrea.
All these people are at grave risk of imprisonment, torture, abuse, indefinite periods of slavery, and in some cases, execution. This proposed refoulement is in flagrant breach of Egypt’s legal obligations under several UN treaties. Indeed, the imprisonment of refugees is contrary to all human rights treaties and refugee conventions.
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees that “everyone has the right to freedom of movement” and “the right to leave any country, including his own.” These 18 detainees have simply exercised this right.
Egypt is party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (and its 1967 Additional Protocol) and is also a signatory to the African Union Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Under these Conventions, Egypt is duty bound to make every effort to protect the rights and ensure the safety of asylum-seekers and refugees regardless of their nationality. Article 91 of the country’s 2014 Constitution provides that political asylum must be available to anyone who has been persecuted.
The very real danger of these returnees being tortured once in Eritrea renders their forcible return in direct contradiction with Egypt’s commitments under Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), which stipulates that no state shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
The Egyptian government is legally bound to uphold the international conventions it has signed or ratified, including the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the Convention against Torture.
Human Rights Concern –Eritrea (HRCE) is duty bound to highlight the flagrant breaches of international law by the Egyptian authorities in the actions already taken and those being contemplated in the immediate future.
HRCE calls on the immigration authorities in Egypt to release immediately all asylum-seekers who have been detained, and to end at once and entirely the practice of imprisoning refugees.
HRCE appeals to the United Nations bodies and all civilised and democratic UN member states to intervene urgently and remonstrate with the Egyptian government at the highest levels to halt the planned forcible deportation of the 18 Eritrean detainees, and to take speedy action to secure access for the UNHCR to review their cases and process them, and to provide avenues for eligible refugees to find sanctuary in their countries.
Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
