Sisi signed the bill into law yesterday
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed a bill into law that will regulate non-governmental organizations in the country.
The law restricts NGO’s work only to social and developmental fields with up to 5 years imprisonment for those that don’t comply.
According to Al Jazeera, the law mandates all foreign non-governmental groups to pay a start up fee of $16,500 and renew their permit on a regular basis. Any study conducted will also have to be granted prior permission from the state before being published.
The law has been criticized by the United Nations and human rights activists.
Mohamed Zaree, Egypt’s program director at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, told Reuters news agency that the new law on NGOs was “the worst in history” and would effectively invalidate all present NGOs.
Zaree has already been banned from travel and has been charged with “receiving funds from foreign entities to harm national security”.
There are approximately 47,000 NGOs in Egypt and more than 100 of them are foreign based organizations.
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