Egypt’s Ministry of Social Solidarity has blocked six women’s rights and development projects undertaken by the Egyptian Center for Women Legal Assistance (ECWLA) since 2024, freezing vital legal and psychological support for victims of violence under restrictive civil society regulations.
The latest rejection of the “My Right, My Protection” initiative highlights a widening bureaucratic bottleneck under social solidarity minister Maya Morsy. Rights advocates argue the ministry uses expansive interpretations of NGO laws to systematically drain independent organizations of foreign funding and stall operations.
ECWLA announced Tuesday that administrative rejections and procedural delays had compromised six of its human rights programs. The most recent obstruction occurred on Monday, when the ministry formally rejected, without reason, a Cairo-based project designed to combat violence against women through legal aid and reproductive rights advocacy.
Under Egypt’s law on the exercise of civil work, NGOs may receive foreign grants provided they notify the ministry within 30 working days of deposit. The regulations grant a central civil society unit 60 working days to object after consulting unspecified administrative and security bodies.
ECWLA criticized the ministry’s calculation of these deadlines, noting that officials routinely extend the 60-day review period to over six months by pausing the clock for arbitrary inquiries. The group stated that these protracted delays caused two projects to miss their contractual deadlines with international donors, forcing the return of hard-currency funding.
The stalled initiatives addressed critical social issues, including human trafficking, gender discrimination, and digital security measures against cyber-blackmail. ECWLA noted that partnering civil society groups working with the same international donors had received approvals, suggesting a pattern of selective obstruction against their organization.
Jawaher El-Taher, the director of the access to justice program at ECWLA, accused the Ministry of Solidarity of adopting an approach that includes “clear targeting” of the institution and its work. She pointed out that the ministry has not approved any projects for them since Dr. Maya Morsy took over the ministry’s portfolio, emphasizing that the rejection comes without giving any clear reasons or legal justifications.
The human rights activist added to Al Manassa that this policy threatens the future of civil society organizations and affects the target groups within their projects, including women and girls. She noted that the rejected projects aimed primarily to serve the state and achieve the goals of the “National Strategy 2030”.
She added, “These projects provide the country with hard currency that it is in dire need of, but the rejection decisions mean the return of these funds once again to the donor agencies, including foreign embassies that operate officially inside Egypt, and there is nothing legally preventing cooperation with them.”
The center announced it will pursue all available legal and judicial channels to challenge the administrative rejections. The group demanded that the government mandate written justifications for all funding denials and institute transparent timelines to safeguard independent civil society work in Egypt.
