Annual Report of The National Council for Human Rights

Foreword - Cont.

However, this report is to be read in light of the special nature of the NCHR. This nature neither render it under any circumstances as a governmental agency or organisation as imagined by some, nor does it make it a civil society organization that emerges spontaneously and voluntarily according to the will of some individuals interested in human rights and seeking to identify, prevent, or stop the recurrence of cases of violation of rights and freedoms.

This special nature of the NCHR led it to build bridges with ministries and other official entities of the State. Through these bridges, the NCHR seeks to encourage ministries and entities to respect and undertake steps to promote human rights, each within its respective competence.

A five-member committee composed of the deputies of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and the Interior and the Assistant Public Prosecutor was thus established and is convened at the NCHR.

For this reason, the report outlines the activities, measures and arrangements instituted on the part of these ministries and the other agencies to ensure respect for citizens' rights and freedoms.

The special nature of the NCHR also prompted it to build bridges with civil society organizations working in the field of human rights.



The report relies in all its chapters on the available sources of data and information collected as a result of liaison with the concerned agencies, after being reviewed, analysed and evaluated. The most important sources are:

      - Complaints received by NCHR, findings of the follow-up on such complaints with         complainants, answers received to questions raised (in many cases) by the         NCHR.
      - Reports received by the NCHR from human rights NGOs.
      - Data and reports received by the NCHR from ministries and other bodies.
       - Communications with the UNHCHR, national institutions in some countries, and         international NGOs.

Within this framework, and despite the detailed data on some human rights and freedoms violations committed during 2004 that the reader will find in this report, the accuracy and objectivity used in describing "the conditions of human rights in Egypt" and the position of some governmental bodies on related issues, such as torture and repeated detention owing to the application of the Emergency Law, calls for the NCHR to report, in appreciation, the compliance of most of the ministries and their subordinate bodies with the comments and recommendations successively made by the NCHR.

An example of this is the compliance by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Public Prosecutor with the comments of the NCHR on provisional detention, and travel interdiction. In this regard, committees were set up at the MoJ and the Office of the Public Prosecutor to review the legislative provisions on these two procedures. The Public Prosecutor issued orders to prosecutors to apprehend absconding individuals charged with crimes relating to investment and non-performance and to release them once they voluntarily return and turn themselves in to renew the legal procedures taken against them.

The report also credits the Ministry of Interior (MoI) responding to many of the NCHR's recommendations. It voluntarily undertook steps to cancel punishment by flogging in prisons, remove the wire partitions separating prisoners from visitors, and intensify training programs for policemen and incorporate therein detailed education on human rights concepts. The Ministry, moreover, intensified its efforts to improve the living, health and educational conditions of prisoners. It was keen to learn the point of view of the NCHR on torture and detention and its recommendation to terminate the state of emergency.