The UN special rapporteur on the human rights to water and sanitation said Egypt has made measurable progress in expanding drinking water and sewerage services, but warned that certain policies could undermine constitutional guarantees and international obligations, urging authorities to prioritize basic water use instead of attributing current pressures solely to scarcity.
Pedro Arrojo Agudo visited Egypt from Feb. 8 to 17, meeting government officials and representatives of international organizations and civil society, and touring water and sanitation projects in Cairo, Kafr El-Sheikh, Fayoum, Aswan, and Qena, which he said helped him learn “more about the challenges and good practices in the country,” he said in a statement following his visit.
While acknowledging significant infrastructure expansion supported by international partners and multilateral lenders, Arrojo cautioned that financial pressures to privatize water management — including under Law No. 172 of 2025, which opens desalination to private investment — could threaten access for poor and marginalized communities.
Egypt’s constitution recognizes the right to safe drinking water, the UN rapporteur said, but the human rights to water and sanitation are not clearly embedded in legislation or practice. He described the 2021–2026 National Human Rights Strategy as a positive step, but called for stronger legal and institutional guarantees.
Arrojo also pointed to structural governance challenges. Responsibility for water management is divided among several ministries and the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater, creating overlapping mandates and inefficiencies that may marginalize local authorities. He urged greater involvement of municipalities and civil society to ensure management grounded in human-rights principles.
Transparency emerged as a central concern. Although officials told him that around 13 million water samples are tested annually in independent laboratories and insisted the water is safe, Arrojo criticized the failure to publish results, citing explanations that they are “hard to understand” or withheld for “national security” reasons. He said free public access to water-quality data is essential.
He urged limits on restrictions that squeeze public debate or target people for expressing their views or criticizing the government’s efforts on pollution, saying concern has grown in light of the criminalization of spreading rumors.
He said there are wide gaps in water services between urban and rural areas, and between new cities and poor villages, with some homes still lacking indoor taps and many residents relying on unsafe water because of cost.
On water quality, he said he received information pointing to large-scale, systematic untreated industrial discharges into the Nile, including significant volumes of highly dangerous toxic substances, some linked to major companies. He also said most agricultural drainage, containing nutrients and agrochemicals, ends up in the Nile and its groundwater reservoirs.
Despite major efforts to expand water and sanitation networks, he said service gaps remain clear, especially in villages and poor areas, with about 7% of the population lacking indoor taps and many families relying on unsafe sources or costly filtration devices.
He also recorded a sharp disparity in distribution between cities, villages, and new cities, saying the latter receive about 2.5 times as much water as villages.
Arrojo praised the “Decent Life” initiative to develop rural villages and UNICEF’s efforts to finance affordable household connections, but said the government must keep strengthening equal participation for women and marginalized groups and open a transparent civic dialogue that allows public access to water-quality test results without security restrictions that stifle debate.
He noted that these recommendations are preliminary observations, but said he will present his detailed findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September.
Egypt is suffering a water deficit: it needs about 114 billion cubic meters a year, while available supplies range between 60 and 61 billion cubic meters annually, including 55.5 billion cubic meters as Egypt’s share of Nile water.
