U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1997 - Egypt

At the end of 1996, an estimated 46,000 or more refugees were living in Egypt, including at least 40,000 Palestinians, 3,500 refugees from Somalia, 1,500 from Sudan, and about 1,000 from various other countries. Role of UNHCR Egypt, although a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, has not granted official recognition to refugees within its territory. UNHCR has conducted interviews to determine whether some individuals fall within its protection mandate. The actual number of refugees in Egypt was probably much greater than UNHCR's official numbers indicate. The government issued renewable residence permits to refugees identified by UNHCR. UNHCR also referred mandate refugees to Caritas, which provided a small amount of financial assistance. UNHCR reported that it interviewed 2,026 asylum seekers in Egypt during 1996, recognizing nearly 17 percent (about 335) as mandate refugees. During 1996, UNHCR completed a verification process of registered refugees remaining in Egypt. Based on the results of that process, the official number of Somali refugees in Egypt decreased from about 6,000 at the beginning of 1996 to about 3,500 at year's end. In addition to Somalis, Sudanese, and Palestinians, Egypt hosted significantly smaller numbers of refugees from Yemen and other countries. All mandate refugees in Egypt received material assistance from UNHCR, according to the agency. During 1996, 30 refugees repatriated from Egypt with UNHCR assistance, including 20 Somalis. Also during 1996, 238 refugees were resettled from Egypt, including 142 Sudanese and 73 Somalis. Sudanese An estimated two million to five million Sudanese live in Egypt, perhaps 20,000 or more of whom are southern Sudanese. It is unclear how many feared persecution in Sudan. At the end of 1996, about 1,500 Sudanese recognized under UNHCR's mandate were living in Sudan. Bilateral agreements between Egypt and Sudan reached during the 1970s gave Sudanese in Egypt relatively liberal residence, land ownership, and entry rights. However, following a coup d'etat in Sudan in 1989, relations between the government in Cairo and the new regime in Khartoum deteriorated, making it more difficult for Sudanese in Egypt to exercise those rights. In 1995, following the attempted assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak, Egypt reintroduced entry visa and residence permit requirements for Sudanese. In the early 1990s, UNHCR received an increasing number of asylum requests from Sudanese. UNHCR initially refused to conduct status determinations. In 1994, as the difficult position of some Sudanese in Egypt became more apparent, UNHCR began to evaluate asylum requests from Sudanese, employing the criteria contained in the UN Refugee Convention. For particularly vulnerable cases, UNHCR attempted to find resettlement options in other countries. UNHCR has generally refused to recognize Sudanese from southern Sudan unless they could demonstrate the individual nature of the persecution they claimed to fear. UNHCR also has not recognized southern Sudanese with well-founded fears who traveled to Egypt following prolonged stays either abroad or in the displaced-person camps near Khartoum. Palestinians Most Palestinian refugees in Egypt were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza by the 1967 ArabIsraeli War. The size of this population is unclear, but may number 40,000 or more persons. These and other Palestinians uprooted in 1967 have been awaiting the outcome of talks between the PLO, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Major disagreements over the number of persons affected by the return provisions of the 1993 Israeli-PLO peace accord still existed between Israel and the other participants in the talks. Some 3,700 Palestinian refugees remained at "Canada Camp," near the border with the Gaza Strip, according to UNRWA. These Palestinians have been awaiting implementation of a repatriation program agreed to by Israel and Egypt that would reunite families divided by the boundary between Egypt and Gaza, which is set by the 1982 Egyptian-Israeli peace accord. A third group of Palestinian refugees in Egypt included the remnants of the estimated 1,000 or more Palestinians whom Libya expelled to the no-man's land on the Egypt-Libya border in 1995. About 250 Palestinians remained there at the end of 1996, unwilling to return to Libya despite Libya's announcement that it would permit them to reenter. Egypt refused to permit the Palestinians to travel through its territory because Israel had cancelled their permits to enter the Palestinian self-rule areas. The 250 continued to petition Egyptian, Palestinian, and Israeli authorities to permit them to join relatives in Egypt and in the Gaza Strip. UNHCR monitored and provided limited assistance to the group.