Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Cairo, Egypt
I would like nothing more than to say that my journey to Egypt was relatively painless; but anybody who has ever endured a layover in Frankfurt would immediately accuse me of lying. After being denied the relief of either window or aisle seats for two flights, and after the horrors of actually being dense enough to purchase anything in the transit area of Frankfurt Airport, I finally arrived in the land of pyramids and pharaohs. A fifteen minute assault by a team of Egyptian doctors donning radiation suits, the all-important SARS-free thumbs-up, and I was unleashed onto the bustling metropolis that is Cairo.
I have spent heaps of time in Cairo in the past, and I found it exactly the way I left it: hot, dusty, noisy and polluted. But the city exudes this magical charm that has never failed to seduce me. Ah, Cairo! There is literally nothing like standing in fifty-degree heat arguing with taxi drivers over fares while dodging kamikaze KFC delivery scooters. It has never ceased to me amaze me how 17 million people can live in the same cramped space without murdering each other. Indeed, Cairo is like an anarchic, yet self-regulated, chaos that would leave any 99th percentile LSAT geek shaking her head in disbelief.
After three solid days of sleep, I arrived at the home of my IHRP internship - the head office of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights - where I spent the following two months with the most wonderful group of people engaged in the futile search for human rights in Egypt. My official duties consisted of translating/editing torture reports and press releases, and planning conferences on democratic transformation. It was actually far less onerous than this description suggests: I spent the majority of my time drinking muddy coffee and smoking cigarettes with EOHR's resident academic, Dr. Yousry, brainstorming and otherwise discussing the social, political and economic development of the Arab world.
By mid-June, realizing that I had far too much free time on my hands, I paid a visit to Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond, director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Department at the American University in Cairo. She asked me to write a report on the insecurities of the Burundian refugee community in Egypt for submission to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The community was comprised of 57 principal claimants, and around a dozen or so dependents. The objective of the report was to demonstrate that this group of Burundians could neither return home nor remain in Egypt, and should therefore receive immediate recognition under the UNHCR mandate, and be referred for resettlement without delay.
I worked every day - morning until night - interviewing members of the community and pouring through hundreds of pages of secondary literature. I knew very little about refugee law, and Barbara quickly enrolled me in an intensive training course for refugee legal aid interns at a legal clinic associated with the university.
I discovered from my interviews that all of the members of the group had experienced some form of racially motivated violence, perpetrated by both the police, and members of the general public. I also found that UNHCR itself, which was responsible for the refugee status determination process in Egypt, was struggling under the weight of tens of thousands of claims, budget cuts and the unenviable task of negotiating with the Egyptian government. Officially, UNHCR estimates that there are some 75-80,000 refugees in Egypt; however, most refugee legal aid workers estimate that the numbers are much higher, approaching a half million or more, most of whom reside in Cairo. Many cynics attribute the conservativeness of UNHCR's figures to a fear of alarming the Egyptian authorities.
One cannot listen to first-hand accounts of persecution and racially-motivated violence on the streets of Cairo without being affected by them. The latter, in particular, affected me: it made me see a country, which I had grown to love over the last few years, in a very different light. I realized that many Egyptians - including many of my friends - held a great number of misconceptions about the plight of refugees residing in Egypt. As the end of my internship drew near, I scrambled to contact all the Cairene journalists I knew, asking them to write articles with an eye toward raising awareness of the difficulties faced by sub-Saharan African refugees in Egypt. I later learned that one friend, who writes for an Arabic-language daily, was able to publish an article on the problem; however, the paper is not available on the internet and I was not able to acquire a copy.
Given the prevailing political climate - and common stereotypes of Arabic-speaking people - I feel I should state that I received a great number of positive responses concerning both the nature of my work, and the issues I raised regarding the treatment of refugees in Egypt. As I stated above, one friend wrote an article on racially-motivated violence against refugees; another friend - a doctor - offered to volunteer her time with a refugee clinic which specializes in the documentation of torture; other friends listened with sympathy, shock and horror, pledging to do more to help refugees. Overall, it was quite heartening.
By the end of July, my eagerness to return home was increasing at a rate that was commensurate with the rising temperatures in Cairo. I still hadn't finished the security report, but I had completed my fieldwork, and would finish writing the report in Canada. It took me an additional six weeks to finish, but it was finally sent to UNHCR in late September. Things move at a glacial pace in the world of refugee protection, but we hope that our work will ultimately lead to the resettlement of this group of refugees.
