With a growing number of refugees seeking asylum in Egypt, Law No. 164 of 2024 was enacted to establish a comprehensive framework for managing refugee affairs and safeguarding their rights. Egypt saw a seven-times rise in the number of new individuals seeking asylum with 209,100 fresh asylum applications, as reported by the United Nations High Commission of Refugees’s (UNHCR) Mid-Year Trends 2024.
This has pushed the country to second place after the USA in terms of the number of fresh asylum applications. As of October 2024, there are 800,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt registered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Over 60% of them hail from Sudan followed by Syria.

This exponential rise in the number of asylum seekers and refugees in Egypt is a direct consequence of the major conflicts that its neighbouring countries have been embroiled in. Since the onset of the Sudan armed conflict in April 2023, Egypt has received more than 1.2 million Sudanese, making it the largest host country of Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers.
The recent ouster of President Bashar al-Assad after a 13-year civil war caught Egypt at a crossroads on account of the major influx of Syrians from the conflict-ridden country. According to UNHCR, there are 159,000 Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt who are registered. The actual figure is expected to be much larger.
Following the outpouring of refugees and asylum seekers from unstable regions across Egypt’s borders, xenophobia and anti-refugee sentiments have seen a rise. "We are forced to remain silent and tolerate whatever happens to us because we cannot file police reports or officially complain about any abuses,” Fatima, a Syrian asylum-seeker and single mother of two, told DW News.
With Egypt tackling an economic crisis of its own, experts have described the ongoing influx of refugees and asylum-seekers as a burden to the crippling economy, in turn, paving way for the new law. According to Sahar Albazar, Deputy Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Egyptian House of Representatives, Egypt’s strategic geographical position places it at the heart of regional conflicts, thereby opening it to utmost pressure from hosting refugees.
The Draft Law
In view of this, the Government of Egypt announced, in June 2023, its intention to promulgate a new asylum law. This law replaced the erstwhile refugee status determination system. The latter is an initiative by the UNHCR to obtain information on individuals seeking asylum and enable governments to determine their refugee status. After receiving approval ‘in principle’ from the Defence and National Security committees, the Egyptian House of Representatives, on 17 November 2024, approved the draft law.
The draft bill transferred the primary responsibilities towards regulations of refugees and asylum seekers to the Government of Egypt from the UNHCR. Signed into law by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi a month later, the legislation aims to create a permanent refugee committee with absolute power under Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly to oversee asylum applications and services.
"This law strikes a balance between upholding our international commitments, while preserving the national security of Egypt," said Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty to Reuters while outlining the need for this law.
The legislation comprises 39 articles emphasizing the procedural and substantive intricacies of granting and renewing refugee status.
There are three key determinants to granting and renewing refugee status. First, refugees and asylum seekers must “respect Egypt’s values and tradition.” Second, they are forbidden from doing anything that could harm national security and public order. Lastly, they are banned from engaging in any political or partisan activity. Failure to adhere to these rules would lead to denial of refugee status and immediate deportation.
According to the UN special rapporteur on human rights of migrants, Article 7 of the law categorises asylum applications into ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’, thereby differentiating in the time taken to process the said application i.e. 6 months and 1 year respectively. This provision holds special importance due to possible concerns of the UN special rapporteur vis-a-vis criminalization and deprivation of the liberty of asylum seekers.
This watertight segregation of legitimate and illegitimate asylum applications is based on how migrants come to Egypt. A “legitimate” application is one where an asylum seeker’s status would be determined by the standing committee within six months from the date of its submission unlike the one year taken in case of an “illegitimate” application.
By introducing the term “illegitimate”, the asylum law inherently associates irregular migration with criminal behaviour, implying wrongdoing on the part of asylum seekers. The UN special rapporteur flags it as a major concern because this could deny rightful asylum to those individuals who are fleeing persecution, violence, or other extreme hardships and have no access to regular migration pathways.
Despite these concerns, there have been comments by the Egyptian authorities justifying these contentious portions of the law. “Such provisions in the law are an important step to provide full protection for refugees and guarantee their basic rights, while taking into account maintaining national security and the country's stability”, said Dr Ali Mahran, Chairman of the Health and Population Committee of the Egyptian Senate while speaking to Al-Ahram.
In addition to this, the law grants refugees the right to education, healthcare, freedom of work, religious belief, participation in civil society organizations etc, in line with the 1951 UN Refugee Convention to which Egypt is a party. As per the Egyptian constitution, the 1951 convention and its complimentary 1967 protocol enjoy the same status as national legislation.
Criticism and Backlash
Nonetheless, the law has been made subject to systematic scrutiny and scathing criticism by human rights groups and civil society organisations on account of the hasty legislative process and several clauses with ambiguous legal terminology and loopholes.
The state of urgency in which the Egyptian House of Representatives approved the draft bill and had it ratified by the president, precisely one month later, raised doubts with regard to potential flaws in the law in the minds of human rights organisations and the refugee community. Activists argue the law was rushed without consultation with civil society organisations or the UNHCR.
"The law was passed through with a great deal of urgency and secrecy," Karim Ennarah, Director of the research unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), told Agence France-Presse.
Tarek Radwan, the Human Rights Committee Chairman in the Egyptian Parliament, justified this by saying that “the speed of legislation stems from the need for legislation,” while speaking to Middle East Monitor.
The EIPR and Refugees in Egypt (RIE) released an in-depth study titled A regression on the status quo: bill undermines basic protections for refugees, outlining the potential issues and flaws present in the recently passed law. The study has delineated the issues into 15 pointers, ending with a range of conclusions and recommendations.
For instance, the study finds article 37 of the law which penalises providing assistance and shelter to refugees, in contravention to article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The latter protects refugees from penalties, detention, and restrictions on their movement, thereby, paving way for their shelter. The draft law also extends the same restrictions and grounds for penalisation to the employment of refugees, hindering their access to employment and the enjoyment of their rights stipulated elsewhere in the draft law.
Furthermore, seven UN Human Rights Council rapporteurs sent a joint letter to the Government of Egypt expressing their reservations and drawing a detailed critique of the law. The letter indicated the contradiction of the law with international law and raised key points of concern vis-a-vis Egypt’s first domestic asylum law.
The UN Refugee Convention and protocol increases the possibility for asylum seekers to find refuge in a country away from their habitual residence which has become unlivable due to various reasons. The 1951 convention, by explicitly excluding only two groups from refugee protection i.e. war criminals and persons acting contrary to the UN, sets a strong precedence towards an inclusive law. On the other hand, the Egyptian law by introducing provisions like Article 7 categorically contravenes international law since it has imposed layers of restrictions over helpless migrants.
The core principle of the 1951 Refugee Convention is non-refoulement which finds its first reference in Article 13 by stipulating for a prohibition of “extradition of refugees.” Non-refoulement states that a person shall not be deported to a country where they face a direct threat of persecution or serious harm.
The UN rapporteurs have emphasised the inclusion of the principle of non-refoulement as the preliminary point in the preamble of any national asylum law, a missing tenet in Egypt’s asylum law. This explicit exclusion of the core principles paves way for refoulement in Egypt, thereby going against the international law tenets.
Over the past weeks, Egyptian authorities have taken strict measures towards restricting the entry of Syrian nationals in view of the recently ratified legislation. In order to facilitate compliance, Cairo has banned the entry of Syrians into Egypt except those holding temporary residency permits, as reported by The New Arab. This marks the second wave of restrictions on Syrians since the conflict broke out following the toppling of the government.
In addition to this, the Egyptian President has time and again stated that his country will not take in anymore displaced Palestinians since the outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip in October, 2023. In Egypt, neither the UNHCR nor the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) hold a direct mandate for Palestinian refugees.
To worsen the ongoing plight, the enactment of Egypt’s New Asylum law has set off an era of insecurity for the refugees of the conflict-ridden areas of the Middle East and North African countries. This insecurity manifests in increased fears of detention, limited access to basic services, and heightened vulnerability to exploitation and violence.
As Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, says “the government should heed the calls from civil society to revise this legislation in line with international standards” to address the massive refugee community in the Middle East looking at Egypt as their last resort for a stable and secure future.
Edited by News Desk Staff
Aashi Sharma (she/her) is a student of law at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab and a writer at Political Pandora.
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Keywords:
Egypt Asylum Law, Refugee Rights Egypt, Refugee Influx Egypt, Sudanese Refugees Egypt, Syrian Refugees Egypt, Refugee Legislation Egypt, Egypt Refugee Policy, UNHCR Egypt Refugees, Egypt Immigration Law, Refugee Crisis MENA, Non-Refoulement Principle, Refugee Protection Egypt, Egypt Refugee Challenges, Human Rights Egypt, Refugee Law Criticism.
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