On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance, Stop Enforced Disappearance Campaign Document 378 New Disappearances Since August 2016 in its Second Annual Report

August 30, 2017
On the international day of Enforced Disappearances, Stop Enforced Disappearance campaign published its second annual report since the launch of the campaign in August 2015. This report reflects numbers, data and names of the cases the campaign could document from August 1st, 2016 until mid-August 2017. Additionally, the campaign updated its website and calls on its supporters to join us in blogging about the disappeared through the different means of social media starting from 7:00 Pm.
Since August 1st, 2016 until mid-August 2017, Stop enforced disappearance campaign has documented 378 disappearances, 4 of which are females. According to our statistics, 87 did not appear, 182 are in custody after they appeared before the public prosecution, 21 cases have been released on bail, and 30 others have been released without a formal investigation, one case received a judicial verdict, while 57 others’ fate is unknown due to the lack of information availability during the documentation period. These cases are referred to by N/A. Most of the disappeared spend more than a month without knowing their fate.
Although the campaign documented many cases of unlawful killings following enforced disappearances, the annual report did provide an analysis due to the additional effort and details this topic needs. Therefore, further information and analyses would be provided in a separate report.
According to the campaign’s geographical area of disappearance category, central governments such as, Cairo, Giza and Alexandria came on top of the governorates with a total of 192 disappearances. Delta governorates ranked second with a total of 134 disappearances, Upper Egypt governorates came third with a total of 43 disappearances, Canal governorate had 3 disappearance and Sinai had 6 disappearances.
According to age category, youth category, aged between 18 and 40 years, came first with 240 disappearances. These victims are mostly university students. Adults age category, between 40 and 60 years, came second with a total of 56 disappearances. Children aged between 0 and 18 years comes as the third category with 30 disappearances. For the elderly category, above 60, the campaign documented 4 cases. The rest of the 48 cases the campaign could not document their ages.
Under the profession category, students ranked first with a total number of 155 disappearances. Other jobs ranks second with a total of 138 disappearances. Public sector officials’ category came third with a total number of 48 disappearances. The data showed that two cases were unemployed, and other 34 whose professions were unknown to the campaign team.
Last year, Stop Enforced Disappearance campaign released its first annual report which included documentation for cases that forcibly disappeared from June 30, 2013 until mid-August 2016. This report reflected a total number of 912 disappearances in Egypt.
The following are a number of recommendations directed to the Egyptian government
Criminalization of enforced disappearance in the Egyptian penal code and declaring it as a crime without a statute of limitation along with increasing the severity of punishment in proportion with the violation.
Announcing the disappeared places of detention and enabling them to communicate with their families and lawyers to ensure their legal rights.
Amending the current penal code to comply by the 1984 Convection Against Torture’s definition of torture.
Accession to Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court for 1998
Accession to 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
Accession to 2002 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture