With Egypt's presidential campaign entering its second week, rival candidates — former military chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi — have spent the last seven days unveiling their electoral platforms, hoping to widen (...)
On Friday, 25 January, Egypt will mark the second anniversary of the mass uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands of Egyptians will once again amass at Tahrir Square to commemorate the occasion and one thing is (...)
A few weeks ago I was invited to a UNDP-sponsored forum on “women's participation in post-revolutionary parliamentary elections.”
Policy makers, legislators and opinion leaders from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia had gathered to share their experiences in (...)
It was as if the clock had turned back to those fateful days last November when youth revolutionaries had battled with security forces on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in downtown Cairo, in protests demanding an end to military rule. This week's clashes (...)
The first time female genital mutilation was discussed openly in Egypt was in 1994. This was during the UN-coordinated International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The two week conference brought together world leaders, (...)
Shahira Amin
In March 2011, blogger Maikel Nabil became the first prisoner of conscience in Egypt, post-revolution. He was arrested and detained on charges of spreading rumours about the armed forces and criticising the military in his blog posts. (...)
Shahira Amin
Innocence of Muslims, an obscure film produced in the United States ridiculing Islam and its revered prophet Muhammad, sparked angry protests across the Middle East and the Islamic World last week, threatening to ruin America's (...)
Shahira Amin
In July 2007 I was commissioned by CNN to produce a feature story on Egyptian identity. The four-minute piece was to air on CNN's Inside Africa, a weekly show that takes pride in showing viewers the ‘real' Africa in all its diversity, (...)
Shahira Amin
For many Egyptians, life was tough under the former regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Now it's even tougher and things are likely to get worse before they get better, warn the analysts.
Over year and a half after the popular uprising (...)
Shahira Amin
Early last year Israelis watched with bated breath as mass protests swept Egypt, threatening to unseat long-time autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak (whom Israel had described as a “close regional ally"). Mubarak was toppled following the (...)
Shahira Amin
A month after the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsy was elected president, Egyptians are still waiting for the new leader to fulfill his promise of forming a national unity government. While a new cabinet is expected to be announced (...)
Shahira Amin
Last Tuesday was an exciting day for the women of Sanafeer, a small village in Qalyubia, East of Cairo. The women were all smiles as they heard their names being called out to receive their national ID cards for the first time. Several (...)
Shahira Amin
The death of former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has drawn mixed reactions from Egyptians many of whom were in awe of the man they knew little about. Suleiman who was Vice President briefly in the last days of Mubarak's rule was (...)
Shahira Amin
This week I was invited to an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in the Austrian capital Vienna. The gathering, held to discuss the safety of journalists working in areas of conflict and civil unrest, (...)
Shahira Amin
The conviction that people of other faiths or sects are deviant or heretic has for years been constantly hammered into the psyche of Egyptians, encouraging hatred and physical violence against «the other.»
“From all the countries of the (...)
Voiceless, invisible, submissive and oppressed that is how Arab women have, for decades, been perceived by the West. Then came the mass uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen , Libya and Syria . The images of women defiantly protesting alongside men (...)
Shahira Amin
Millions of Egyptians huddled in front of their TV sets Sunday afternoon watching with bated breath as Counselor
Farouk Sultan, the Head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, announced the results of the
presidential run-off (...)
Last Monday I headed to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests which brought down strongman Hosni Mubarak. I was driven by a sense of nostalgia for the 25 January 2011 revolution, an all inclusive movement that united pro-reform activists from (...)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives in Egypt tonight on the first leg of a regional tour that will include Tunisia and Libya. Erdogan has also expressed a desire to visit Gaza as part of the trip to show solidarity with the enclave's (...)
Egypt has been affected only slightly by the global financial crisis and now that it is coming to an end, things are going to start getting even better. At least that was the message that Minister of Investment Mahmoud Moheildeen shared with (...)