Research & Commentary Results

In the wake of the revolutionary fervor that has swept the Middle East and North Africa since the beginning of 2011, retributive justice has taken precedence over restorative justice approaches as countries seek to address human rights violations.

The Egyptian revolutionary motto, “bread, freedom, social justice,” which echoed over 18 days until Hosni Mubarak’s ouster on February 11, 2011, illustrated how restricted access to food had become one of the people’s main grievances. In the aftermath of the revolution, infused by a renewed sense of ownership of their country, many citizens launched environmental initiatives with a focus on sustainable agriculture.

In December 2012, the Central Bank of Egypt announced that the country’s foreign reserves had reached an alarming low of $15 billion, less than 50 percent of its holdings following Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011. At that point, the Bank was no longer capable of providing the treasury with the monthly dollar transfers necessary for the purchase of basic food and energy imports, and thus had to rely on foreign borrowing to cover these imports and debt service as well as to support local currency.

Economist Zubair Iqbal explains the daunting economic challenges facing Arab countries in transition following the Arab Awakening and the different trajectories stemming from those nations’ policy responses. Tunisia and Egypt provide an instructive case study: the former made hard fiscal decisions and has embraced sound economic principles and achieved broad support for a reform plan, while the latter, suffering from more difficult political conditions, has been faced with limited policy options that increase the risk for long-term challenges.

Testimony of MEI Resident Scholar Mohamed Elmenshawy before the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, delivered February 11, 2014.  Click here for video clips and additional testimony from this hearing.

The Christmas visit of Egypt’s interim president Adly Mansour to the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo occasioned much commentary in the Egyptian press about a new era in church-state relations. Indeed, newspaper headlines heralded the visit as the first undertaken by an Egyptian president to a Coptic patriarch to offer congratulations on a Coptic holiday. The interim president’s magnanimity in making the visit was set in stark contrast to the parsimonious attitude of Hosni Mubarak, who would typically leave such obligatory greetings to a lesser figure in the Egyptian government.

Salma El Sayeh co-authored this article.

The recent attacks against Egypt’s police and military have raised concerns over the return of the militant insurgency that plagued Egypt during the 1980s and 1990s. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), a Sinai-based militant group, has repeatedly and publicly claimed responsibility for the cascade of bombings.

The situation in Egypt has been very complicated, with the democratic process and path toward transitional justice shifting under four different ruling systems—Mubarak, SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the interim ruling authorities—over a short period of time. All four systems committed abuses against the people, leaving victims and cases to be investigated. The combination of sharp divisions within society, disagreements about transitional justice itself, and delayed government responses to people’s demands has made the situation particularly charged.

“Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.” Pope Tawadros II, the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, tweeted this verse of scripture in December 2012. He wrote it as one of a series of daily reflections on the book of Proverbs. This phrase, however, also provides an entry point into the Coptic Orthodox Church and its place in Egyptian civil society. Egypt is in the midst of rebuilding its government and society following an 18-day revolution in 2011, 18 months of military rule that ended with the election of Mohamed Morsi, and the removal of President Morsi one year later by the Egyptian military in July 2013. Egyptian Christians now have the opportunity and challenge to renegotiate their place in Egyptian civil society during this time of unrest and transition. What wisdom, understanding, and vision will Christian clergy and lay leaders put forth in order to co-labor with their neighbors, the state, and other stakeholders to build a new house for Egyptian society? This new vision must be rooted in Copts’ historical experience and include the possibility for new models of engagement and representation.

Since the inception of its transitional justice and accountability program in November 2012, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has faced a number of challenges related to its work. Of these, one of the most arduous has been operating in a context of ongoing political and social upheaval. The period since November 2012 can generally be divided into three distinct phases, each marking a change in EIPR’s organizational and conceptual approaches to transitional justice. Though EIPR sees its work in Egypt less in phases and more as a long and complicated struggle against injustice and impunity that will likely continue for the foreseeable future, the three phases are helpful for documenting its approach to transitional justice since 2012.

This article was first published on Al Jazeera on December 24, 2013.

The downfall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has put political Islam at a crossroads. Not only has it shown that ideology per se is not a guarantor of political success, but also that Islamists need to rethink their strategy and tactics in order to deal with the new environment following the Arab Spring.

Samy M. has been providing currency exchange services on the black market in Cairo’s hectic neighborhood of Nasr City for nearly a decade. He does this from the crammed office of his other, formal business, which offers real estate services.

“Money exchange has always been lucrative, but it was even busier last year,” he says. With the Egyptian pound weak, hovering at around 6.9 pounds to the dollar on the official market for the past few months, people are drawn to black market rates, which are sometimes as high as 7.20 pounds to the dollar. 

In the eyes of the world, Egypt is Cairo, where political unrest leads the news. With around a quarter of the nation’s 90 million inhabitants concentrated around the capital, in addition to the bulk of wealth and industry, it’s easy to forget the rest of the country, which is what state officialdom has done for decades.  For administrative purposes, Egypt is divided into 29 governorates, each with a capital city.

Egyptians who believed that the removal of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 would lead to the establishment of a democratic government have faced many setbacks. Youthful revolutionary activists unsuccessfully challenged the power of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) transitional government and the autonomy of the military. The electoral triumph of Islamist parties and candidates in parliamentary and presidential elections in 2011 and 2012 eclipsed weak and inexperienced secular parties and brought to power leaders who failed to ensure adequate representation of political opponents, women, and Copts in key aspects of governing, or to protect Copts from rising attacks. Continuing divisions among opposition forces, along with the roundup of Islamists and other opponents by the military, which engineered the July 2013 removal of President Mohamed Morsi, suggest that the struggle to achieve justice and create an accountable government will be prolonged.