The interior ministry has set a plan to “secure” Easter celebrations on Monday May 8, which includes “secret police” to arrest those who commit sexual harassment, Major General Amgad Shafei told Aswat Masriya.

Following a long drawn-out legal process surrounding the issue of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Egypt receiving foreign funding, an Egyptian administrative court on Tuesday issued a ruling saying that the NGOs in fact are legally permitted to receive funding from abroad.

The prosecution requested an adjournment to revise case papers and contact other defendants in a session to determine whether or not to freeze the assets of human rights workers Gamal Eid and Hossam Bahgat on Wednesday morning.

Ain Shams University inaugurated on Monday its first unit to combat sexual harassment, under the auspices of the university’s vice president Wahab Ezzat, a delegation from the Swedish embassy in Cairo and two representatives from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Magdy Khaled and Germaine Haddad.

The United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) issued a statement Friday criticizing Egypt’s ongoing repression of independent trade unions and workers’ freedom of association.

United Nations human rights experts warned against the mounting crackdown on civil society in Egypt in a statement issued Monday, calling on the government to put an end to all forms of persecution of human rights defenders and to take effective measures to protect civil society.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement per which Cairo announced that two disputed islands in Red Sea’s Tiran Strait at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba are Saudi territory, igniting public anger against the deal and criticism against the government.

Egypt’s UN ambassador Amr Abu Atta created quite a stir by abstaining during an otherwise unanimous vote to punish and repatriate UN peacekeeping battalions that include personnel suspected of sexual abuse in their assigned countries.

Seventeen rights organisations issued a joint statement on Monday condemning the reopening the case 173/2011, publicly known as the foreign funding case, referring to it as an “orchestrated, escalating assault” on civil society in Egypt.

The United Nations has held a session in Geneva to discuss the human rights situation in various countries, including Egypt. Issues relating to the Egyptian judiciary and the holding of detainees in Egypt were given particular attention. A number of international lawyers, NGOs and political activists addressed these topics during the …