Rights group demands urgent reform as Egypt intensifies restrictions on Baha’i citizens
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) called for urgent executive measures to facilitate legalizing Baha’i marriage and divorce contracts, appoint accredited notaries at the Real Estate Registration and Notarization Authority, and allocate land for their cemeteries across governorates.
The demands coincided with the release of a new EIPR report on Tuesday titled “Erasure: Egypt’s Systemic Campaign to Eradicate its Baha’i Community.” The report tracks official policies targeting Baha’i citizens since a landmark 2009 judicial ruling permitted a dash (—) in the ID religion field instead of forcing individuals to claim a faith they do not practice.
EIPR criticized state practices against Baha’is, arguing that over the past decade, discriminatory hurdles have evolved into a systematic policy “aimed at erasing the Baha’i presence altogether.”
Just one day after the report's release in Cairo, EIPR organized a panel discussion on Wednesday in Geneva on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council session. Co-hosted alongside Amnesty International and the Baha’i International Community, the event features EIPR Director Hossam Bahgat and UN Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief and minority issues.
Methodologically, the rights report draws on 30 field testimonies, in-depth interviews with 13 Baha’i citizens, and an analysis of 42 rulings on personal status and burial grounds across various judicial levels, including the Higher Administrative Court.
The report concludes that “the hard-won 2009 legal victory has effectively been turned into a bureaucratic mechanism through which the state acknowledges the Baha’is’ existence while systematically denying them equal rights of citizenship.”
It tracks the impact of “administrative erasure” on daily life from birth to death, ranging from delayed birth certificates and routine infant vaccinations to denying Baha’i mothers the right to pass Egyptian citizenship to children born to foreign husbands.
This bureaucratic siege extends to living conditions, employment, and movement through repeated security summonses and harassment at ports and airports. It culminates in the reduction of available burial spaces for non-adherents of the three recognized religions, following the refusal of governorates and Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy to allocate new land for Baha’i cemeteries, forcing families to transport their deceased over long distances to the sole remaining cemetery in Cairo’s Basateen district.
EIPR recommends establishing a committee within the Civil Status Department to standardize recording the dash (—) in the religion field on national ID cards, ending security surveillance, and removing Baha’i citizens from travel bans and watchlists. EIPR stressed that securing equal citizenship rights requires only political will.
The report highlights the judiciary’s expanding reliance on “public order” to restrict rights, forcing Baha’is into stark choices of “either departure or extinction,” even as the community resists erasure to chart a third path toward equal rights.
In April, the Court of Cassation’s Personal Status Circuit set a decisive precedent regarding Baha’i citizens by overturning appellate and lower court rulings that had verified the marriage of a Baha’i couple.
In the reasoning for Appeal No. 39 of Judicial Year 94 (Personal Status), headed by the Vice President of the Court, the court rejected a lawsuit filed by a Baha’i wife seeking to compel authorities to recognize and enforce a September 1981 marriage contract.
The court held that the Baha’i faith “falls outside the three state-recognized monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism),” ruling that practicing it constitutes “an infringement upon the state’s established systems and public order.”