Michelle Dunne with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shared this post following the Human Rights Commission of the United States Congress which took place in 2017. This is a landmark report on the human rights conditions in Egypt, seven years after the revolution.
Co-chairmen and members of the Commission, thank you for inviting me to testify. You have heard from the other witnesses about the shocking and unprecedented human rights abuses in Egypt since the 2013 military coup. I will offer recommendations about how the United States, a longtime ally and supporter of Egypt, should engage on these issues.
The United States needs to be concerned about human rights conditions in Egypt for several reasons. There is a long-standing American commitment to the principle of defending and advocating internationally recognized human rights norms. Rights abuses in Egypt also endanger U.S. interests as well as those of our close allies in Israel and Europe, who can be affected directly by violence emanating from the country. Since the coup, the military-led government has inflicted repression and humiliation especially on younger Egyptians, whom it apparently fears due to the 2011 youth-led revolution. This has created a widespread sense of injustice and desperation that makes young Egyptians particularly susceptible to recruitment by terrorist groups in the country, who seem to have an unending supply of foot soldiers to fuel an insurgency that is escalating, as demonstrated by the recent horrific attack on a Sinai mosque.
Beyond principles and interests, the United States has a special responsibility to address human rights abuses in Egypt due to its longtime relationship with that country’s government. The Egyptian military in particular has received more than $47 billion in security assistance from American taxpayers since the mid-1970s, including about 20 percent of all U.S. Foreign Military Financing funds in fiscal year 2017.1 That military is now ruling the country in a far more direct, brutal, and rapacious fashion than it has at any time since the bilateral relationship began. As a result, Egypt is increasingly vulnerable to instability due to a toxic combination of economic hardship, new laws that legitimize repression, human rights abuses, and terrorist violence.