ICC Note: The new Egyptian Church construction law has many human rights activists feeling uneasy. While the law was originally intended to help the Christian community, this is clearly not the case. According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights the law is actually anti-constitutional. The law, as it stands now, serves as a pretext to pursue christian activity taking place in households.

10/06/2016 Egypt (Al-Monitor): Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a law on the construction and restoration of churches on Sept. 28, nearly a month after it had passed in parliament.

Although the government and church representatives agreed on the law, it was opposed by some civil society movements because of restrictions it posed on construction licenses, such as licenses being dependent on the number of Christians in the area where a church is to be built.

According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), the law is a breach of the constitution and international conventions, as it restricts the right of religious practice and sets “arbitrary” conditions for obtaining a construction permit.

In this context, Amr Abdul Rahman, a legal affairs researcher at EIPR, told Al-Monitor, “The Egyptian government does not differentiate between the right to practice religious rituals and the right to build places of worship. For instance, Christians are not allowed to hold [communal] prayers in a private house, as this would be illegal in the eyes of the public prosecution and security services in the absence of a license to turn such a location to a place of worship — which would be a church in this case.”

He said, “This way, the law would serve as a pretext to pursue people [in]to their homes, claiming that they are trying to turn their houses into a church without any license, while some prefer to pray at home. However, authorities insist that prayers should be held in the church, which has greatly contributed to the sectarian violence that has been going on.”

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