Background Briefing

V. International Law and Egypt’s Parties Law

By impeding and preventing the emergence and legal recognition of new political parties and placing unreasonable restrictions on existing ones, the government is failing to ensure that basic rights under Egyptian and international law are respected.

The Egyptian constitution sets out that the government of Egypt is based upon a multiparty system,58 and that participation in public life is a national duty for each citizen.59 The first article of Egypt’s political parties law affirms (as noted above) that “Egyptians have the right to create political parties, and [that] every Egyptian has the right to belong to any political party.” Yet the repeated and apparently often arbitrary rejection of applications from the Wasat Party, the Karama Party, and tens of others over the last three decades is at odds with the law and constitution. In addition, the government, acting through the PPC, has banned or placed unreasonable restrictions on existing parties.

Several provisions of Egypt’s political parties law, and in particular the way in which they operate in practice, are incompatible with Egypt’s international legal obligations. Egypt is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),60 which guarantees the right of peaceful assembly and the right of freedom of association with others (articles 21 and 22). The Egyptian government’s exclusions and restrictions on political parties effectively deny Egyptian citizens meaningful exercise of these rights in the context of their right to organize and associate according to their political beliefs.

The ICCPR also guarantees the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs either directly or through freely chosen representatives, and the right to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections (article 25). These rights entail participation in, and voting for, political parties. They are guaranteed “without unreasonable restrictions.” The broad power and unfettered discretion of the Political Parties Committee to exclude and restrict political parties, and the laws it relies on to do so (in particular article 4 of the political parties law and its vague and subjective criteria), are in Human Rights Watch’s opinion “unreasonable restrictions” and effectively gut the rights set forth in article 25.

Regulation of political parties by law can require that parties do not have a program that would be incompatible with core democratic principles and the rule of law. It is also the prerogative of a government, where evidence exists that a party or its members have engaged in illegal conduct—such as acts of, or incitement to violence—to prosecute them according to the law. However, plurality of parties and the opportunity of new and varied political parties to emerge is central to the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs either directly or through freely chosen representatives and the right to vote and to be elected in periodic and fair elections.



58 Article 5.

59 Article 62.

60 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976, ratified by Egypt on January 14, 1982.