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Sabrina Illiano
Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of the Childhood Condition (EFACC)
Cairo, Egypt

This past summer working with EFACC both exceeded and shattered many of the expectations I had coming into this experience. EFACC is the primary organization working in the children’s rights and children’s law in Egypt, so perhaps I was anticipating the corporate atmosphere that I’ve come to expect from large American NGOs. I worried that I would be given menial tasks as opposed to meaningful, challenging assignments or that I would spend more time observing than actually working. Instead, I became a part of a small group of passionate people who welcomed me into their workplace with the expectation that I would be a full participant in EFACC for the duration of my stay.

I’m extremely grateful for the amount of responsibility I was given during my time with EFACC. In the two and a half months that I spent working in Cairo, I was able to gain an inside perspective of what it’s like attempting to make progress against the backdrop of the shaky Egyptian government as a human rights activist. I was told stories about social justice organizations that were shut down for arbitrary reasons because they pushed too hard or were too outspoken, and it gave me a glimpse into the minefield that EFACC is forced to navigate to remain operational. My supervisor taught me the importance of balance and patience in the face of what can sometimes feel like an impossible fight. I hope that the proposals I wrote, research I did, and forms I filled out will continue to contribute to EFACC’s work in a meaningful way after I have left.

I would like to thank my supervisor, Nesma Ali, for her endless support throughout this process and the director of EFACC, Hany Helal, for welcoming me into the organization. I have only scratched the surface of children’s rights in Egypt and in the MENA region as a whole, but I am very grateful for the perspectives I have gained from this opportunity. There is so much more work to be done, but I now have a stronger foundation with which to hopefully continue my work in the future.

Sabrina Illiano
Cairo, Egypt
Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of the Childhood Condition (EFACC)

For the past several weeks, I have had the opportunity to work designing a restorative justice program for children as an alternative to traditional juvenile detention. Protecting the human rights and dignity of those within the criminal justice system is a branch of human rights discourse unto itself, and I’ve found it interesting and challenging to investigate how this branch intersects with children’s rights. Especially considering that our traditional system of crime and punishment is so ingrained, I’m intrigued by efforts to offer alternative models. From what I’ve learned thus far, I believe there could be a place for restorative justice in future discourses on children’s rights.

Programs based on restorative justice are centered around the principles of accountability, crime prevention, reparations, healing, and problem solving. Restorative justice takes the focus off of punishment for crimes, instead emphasizing rehabilitation and making amends. In doing so, it offers the possibility of removing the permanent stigma attached to those labeled as criminal offenders, and thus of a more positive, crime-free future. Programs of this nature can ensure the protection and effective reintegration of children in conflict with the law, children who are the victims or witnesses of crimes, and children who are at risk of belonging to either of these extremely vulnerable groups. While children are theoretically subject to the same human rights protections as adults in the criminal justice system, the unique nature of childhood and adolescence ensures that their needs differ from adult offenders or victims.

Restorative justice programs integrate respect for children’s rights into the criminal justice process by focusing on voluntary rehabilitation and reintegration. They maintain the human dignity of offenders while empowering victims through healing rather than retribution. This model has been successfully utilized for adult offenders in countries such as Norway, where it has had a positive impact reducing rates of recidivism.

I’m wary, however, of accepting restorative justice at face value as a solution to traditional methods of criminal justice. Restorative justice programs are significantly more expensive than the classic crime and punishment model because the require a larger investment of time, resources, and personnel. How can we convince governments that restorative justice is worth the financial investment in the long term? Could this type of program be successfully implemented in areas with unstable governments, where children are often most at risk of the worst violations in the criminal justice system, since governments of this type often are not suited to following through on long-term goals? What about in places where prisons are a privatized industry? What would be an incentive for corporations to invest in more expensive programs designed to reduce recidivism when their business is at least partially based on more bodies equals more capital? These are questions I’ve been struggling with since delving into restorative justice with EFACC and I hope to learn more in the future about how this topic can be integrated into human rights discourse.

Sabrina Illiano
Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of the Childhood Condition (EFACC)
Cairo, Egypt

My first few days in Cairo went by so quickly I could hardly believe it. Within less than a week of arriving, I rode a camel to the pyramids, visited one of the oldest mosques in Cairo, and successfully navigated my way to my first day on the job. The EFACC offices are tucked away on the second floor of an apartment building on a quiet residential street in Nasr City, easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

The majority of my worries quickly evaporated as I was greeted warmly by my supervisor at the door, showed to my very own desk, and promptly offered some tea. After some brief chatting about my travels, my accommodations, and my host family, she handed me a 200-page booklet about Egyptian legislation regarding children, asked me to read it, and told me I could keep it for reference. When I was finished, she gave me a piece of paper with my assignments for the week.

I’d been in the office for less than a day, and already I was tasked with writing three proposals: one for a program on domestic violence, one for a program on female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage, and one for a program to help children who have illegally immigrated. She showed me the standard format of a proposal and how to connect to the wifi, and off I went to begin writing and researching.

Since then, it’s been about a month, and I’ve learned so much about the long, challenging process of making even just a little bit of progress in this field. It is especially difficult here, as EFACC receives very little government cooperation for their efforts and is forced to constantly seek funding and support from various networks. They decided we would combine my first two proposals (domestic violence/FGM/early marriage) into one comprehensive program, so we have been working on developing this proposal to send it to the EU for funding requests.

I have identified two major barriers to human rights progress here, which I’ve termed “activation” and “access.” In 2008, legislation regarding the rights of children was finally codified into Egyptian law, largely thanks to the efforts of the EFACC team. While it seems that this was the easier step, we are now faced with the difficulties of activating this legislation.

Since the codification of these new laws, for example, there has been only one successful prosecution of FGM despite the fact that it is still widely practiced. It is significant that this case even achieved a conviction—two, in fact—considering that the family was unwilling to press charges and the authorities were reluctant to assist the prosecutors.

Now that EFACC has cleared the first hurdle of getting legislation successfully included in Egyptian law, we must figure out how to work with communities to turn these formal laws into effective deterrents to human rights violations of children. This is where we come to the second barrier: access. There are many resources that exist to help at-risk groups with issues such as domestic violence, FGM, and early marriage, but it is very difficult to connect them with these resources. Especially in smaller communities, I’ve been taught, many people are unwilling to acknowledge the new laws because they conflict with ingrained cultural norms, and thus there is a problematic lack of documenting and reporting cases.

In an effort to address this problem, we’re developing a series of educational programs designed to link at-risk groups with relevant NGOs, lawyers, and other resources. The idea is to educate community members, particularly educators in schools, about how to recognize, document, and properly report cases. Ideally, the programs will use schools as an intermediary point between the home and the available resources, with educators who are trained to recognize and deal with problems. Hopefully, this will lead to more cases being successfully prosecuted.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to hold people accountable to the new laws and to enforce concrete consequences for breaking them. The process is long and slow, however, with many hoops to jump through, so unfortunately it will likely be a long time before we begin to see stronger respect for children’s rights. However, I look forward to my future projects with EFACC in the coming month.