The National Council for Human Rights is due to issue its annual report next Monday. This report will monitor the human rights situation in Egypt during the last year and official sources at the NCHR said it would describe in detail the violations and complaints received by the Council itself. The sources justified the two month delay in issuing the report saying it took the Interior and Justice Ministries longer than expected to answer some of the Council's queries on some violations, in particular torture cases.
The NCHR monthly meeting yesterday, chaired by Dr. Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd, Vice-President of the Council, witnessed a dispute between some of its members, as some of them called for not including the victims' names or violations in the report, while others demanded that the report reflect the whole human rights situation in 2008. Some local and international human rights organizations consider 2008 as one of the worst especially when it comes to freedom of opinion and expression as well as mistreatment of the Egyptian people. Aboul Magd said he had succeeded in ending the split, stressing that the report had been modified and improved. "Violations will be mentioned», he said, pointing out that the responses received from the government on some parts of the report would be annexed as appendices and would not be commented on. Council member Mona Zulfiqar said the NCHR asked the government for reforms in the field of human rights and freedoms to improve Egypt's image, especially as the report is due to be discussed quite soon by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council in its periodic review of the human rights situation in Egypt. Council member Hafez Abu Seada said the meeting discussed the report of the delegation who took part in the Durban Review Conference in Geneva. He told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Egypt had committed in front of the world to improving the human rights situation. He also noted that the NCHR, the government and human rights organizations would submit 3 separate reports on Egypt's record on human rights by the end of this year, and that they would be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council in February 2010.
