Sarah Champion – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Champion on 2015-09-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to help protect people defending women’s rights in Egypt.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

We regularly raise the importance of human rights, including women’s, with the Egyptian government at both ministerial and official levels, and our Embassy in Cairo continues to monitor alleged cases of sexual and gender-based violence. In 2014 the UK sponsored a delegation of Egyptian Ministry of Justice officials to meet UK counterparts and discuss issues of gender-based violence. These discussions helped inform drafting of the new Egyptian law passed under interim President Adly Mansour, which criminalised sexual harassment in Egypt for the first time. At the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of Egypt’s human rights situation on 5 November 2014 the UK made recommendations focussing on the ability of civil society to operate freely and the protection of women’s rights, which were accepted by Egypt. We continue to discuss the issue of gender-based violence with the Government of Egypt and are seeking practical ways that we can work together in this area.