The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) called on the government Sunday to stop pressuring monks at St. Catherine’s Monastery and halt construction on a state tourism project that UNESCO warns has already caused permanent damage to the World Heritage site.
EIPR warned that Cairo is risking the cultural integrity of the 1,400-year-old South Sinai monastery to push forward the “Great Transfiguration” investment project.
At stake is the future of one of Christianity’s oldest continuously inhabited monastic sites, as authorities attempt to strip the Greek Orthodox monastics of land ownership, alter their legal status, and proceed with development despite international calls for a freeze.
The demand follows a unanimous July decision by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee requiring Egypt to immediately halt construction pending a technical impact assessment.
The decision drew on a report by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory body that found existing project work has caused “serious and permanent damage to the site’s integrity, authenticity and natural surroundings.”
EIPR said authorities are actively pressuring the monks to sign an agreement that would strip them of ownership over the monastery’s historical land and reduce their presence to a “religious tenancy” restricted to holding worship services.
To force compliance, the presidency has refused to issue a decree ratifying the appointment of the monastery’s new archbishop, elected by the Council of Fathers in October 2025.
Sources close to the monastery said the government made the decree conditional on signing the land deal while also reducing the archbishop’s status to a three-year renewable residency permit, breaking with decades of practice granting Egyptian citizenship.
The rights group highlighted sharp contradictions between official assurances and reality on the ground.
Although the government informed UNESCO that a presidential directive suspended the project in September 2025, officials at the housing ministry and Sinai development authority recently reported construction is 97.5% complete. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Sinai has received no official notice of any suspension.
EIPR said the state’s tactics appear designed to pre-empt a pending Court of Cassation case. The court is reviewing two appeals against a May 28, 2025, Ismailia Court of Appeals ruling that ordered monks evicted from service and non-religious lands and transferred those properties to the South Sinai governorate.
EIPR argued that altering the monastery's ownership violates Egypt's obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which forbids revoking established rights.
When Egypt nominated the site for World Heritage status in the early 2000s, the government explicitly recognized full ownership of the surrounding lands, gardens, and buildings by the monastery and the archbishop of Sinai.
The group called for a binding agreement that protects the character of St. Catherine's as a living heritage site. For 14 centuries, the resident monks have protected and managed the sanctuary alongside local Bedouin tribes, making monastic life central to the site's historic identity.
