Combating Trafficking

Refugees, Migration and Human Trafficking:

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry is working through its membership in the Egyptian National Coordinating Committee on Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration (NCCPIM) and the National Coordinating Committee for Combating Human Trafficking in partnership with all stakeholders concerned with the issue of migration, such as the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration, the Ministry of Higher Education, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Local Development and other sectors concerned with addressing issues related to migration. The aforementioned committees work to advance national capabilities that deal with such issues, as well as preparing studies in order to identify the phenomenon and its dimensions and treat it at its core.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs coordinates with government agencies and international organizations concerned with issues of migration, asylum seeking, and the fight against human trafficking, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the official contact point.

Egypt stresses the importance of combating illegal migration in the context of collective cooperation under the principle of burden-sharing and responsibility and away from individual undertaking.

Egypt participates in a positive and effective manner in the "African Union and the Horn of Africa, the European Union and the Horn of Africa" initiatives on migration pathways and combatting human trafficking and smuggling of migrants in cooperation with the concerned African countries.

Egypt hosted the Second Regional Conference for the African Union and Horn of Africa initiative in Sharm El-Sheikh in September 2015.

Egypt participated constructively in the Rome Declaration of November 2014 on the European Union and the Horn of Africa Initiative on migration paths to help the countries of the Horn of Africa in the fight against human trafficking and migrant smuggling. In this context, Egypt hosted the Steering Committee's meeting emanating from the declaration in April 2015 in Sharm Sheikh, where a range of African projects and ideas for development and addressing the root causes of illegal migration have been presented.

Egypt has actively participated in the preparation and drafting process during the Valletta summit on migration (November 2015), whereby it took over the defense of the African point of view as head of the process of Khartoum in coordination with the African Union Commission.

Egypt took over the presidency of the Steering Committee of the Khartoum process during the last year. The presidency then shifted to Britain in November 2015.

Egypt participates in high-level meetings organized by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the Syrian refugees, in order to coordinate support for countries hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees (Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey).

Egypt has been counted - in light of its hosting a large number of refugees, including brotherly Syrians – among the states of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan released by the United Nations for the neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees. The plan aims to improve the situation and raise the level of refugee living conditions and assimilate them in their host communities.