EIPR stresses the importance of equitable distribution of vaccines among citizens, and commitment to full transparency in clarifying the basis on which the vaccine will be distributed, because justice and transparency are the way to gain citizens' confidence in responding to the state's directives during the vaccination process of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Professor Heyns, who last held the position of Director of the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Pretoria, and who was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee from 2017 to 2020, was constantly engaged in regional and international human rights initiatives and legal reform projects in addition to his teaching and scholarly work.
In the first 2 months of 2021 alone Egyptian authorities executed 7 prisoners.
67 new defendants were sentenced to death
48 new defendants received provisional death penalty sentences.
The continued detention of Islam Orabi despite obtaining a decision to release him and having paid his bail constitutes a crime of unlawful detention, and is punishable under Article 280 of the Penal Code which states: “Any person who arrests, jails or detains a person without order by the relevant authorities and in other than the cases in which laws and regulations authorize the arrest of suspects, he shall be punished with detention or a fine not exceeding two hundred pounds”. Orabi’s disappearance from the police department increases fears about his safety and the possibility of deterioration of his health, which may constitute a danger to his life.
This requirement constitutes an encroachment on the concepts of "energy poverty" and "energy justice", because it drains energy resources for the benefit of these factories at the expense of making them available to Egyptian families, especially the poorest. It also contradicts the Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030: "Clean energy at affordable prices", because it sells polluting energy to factories at lower prices than they are, thus impeding the shift towards clean energy.
Today, February 7th, marks a year since Patrick Zaki - the researcher at EIPR and Master’s student at the University of Bologna- was arrested from Cairo Airport. Since then, he has been on remand detention. Last week, the Third Felonies circuit ordered the renewal of his detention for 45 additional days. In the face of this incomprehensible intransigence EIPR can’t but repeat its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of Patrick Zaki due to the absence of justifications for remand detention and demand the dropping of all charges against him.
Today, an EIPR representative submitted a letter to Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity, Nevine Al-Kabbaj, after the cabinet announced its approval of the executive by-laws for the new NGO law at the end its meeting last week. According to the law, the by-laws were supposed to be issued before mid-February 2020. Hereafter are some of the main issues and points raised in this letter:
