Lawyers for Lawyers submitted an advocacy charter to several country delegations to draw attention to the situation of lawyers in Egypt with regard to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Egypt. In March 2019 Lawyers for Lawyers submitted a report for the UPR of Egypt.
In the advocacy charter, Lawyers for Lawyers highlights that the Egyptian authorities do not always uphold the necessary guarantees for the proper functioning of the legal profession in practice, as set out in the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.
Lawyers who work on sensitive cases frequently face reprisals either in relation to their own human rights advocacy or their legal representation of people seen as critical of the government. They are subject to arrest, detention, persecution, and enforced disappearance in connection to their professional activities or in relation to their human rights advocacy. Moreover, lawyers in Egypt are hampered in their access to their clients and case files, and on regular basis travel bans and assets freezing are imposed to obstruct their legitimate work.
Furthermore, lawyers in Egypt are attacked because of exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly or engaging in public discussions about human rights and the rule of law. Criminal charges based on the Egyptian protest law and the counter-terrorism law seem to be a common pattern of harassment increasingly used by the Egyptian authorities against lawyers. The vague and overly broad definition of terrorism allows the law to be used to arbitrarily criminalize lawyers’ internationally protected activities.
Take a look at the advocacy charter here
