The sexual and gender-based violence epidemic meets the COVID-19 pandemic: survivors’ and advocates’ narratives in Egypt

ABSTRACT

This research traces activism over the last 30 years against sexual and gender-based violence with a focus on survivors’ and advocates’ narratives in Egypt. We argue that several focusing events in Egypt and the support of transnational advocacy networks over the last decades have galvanised the efforts of activists and citizens of good will to mobilise around these issues. Egyptian feminist mobilisation during the pandemic brought to the public sphere the untold stories of the forms of violence that occurred through online and social media platforms. While social media and other online tools hold the promise of becoming “a new public sphere” for social movements, the current political atmosphere still has low tolerance for dissent both offline and online. However, the new generation of feminist activists have showed strength in facing difficult social and political challenges which gives hope for future social movement mobilisation on the horizon.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• sexual and gender-based violence
• advocacy
• feminism
• activism
• survivors/victims

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mozn Hassan

Mozn Hassan is an Egyptian feminist activist and founder of ‘Nazra for Feminist Studies’, “The Caucus of Women in Politics in the Arab Region, and “Doria Feminist Fund”. She is currently a MA student in community psychology at the American University in Cairo (AUC). In her work, Hassan has been involved in a range of different activities and campaigns to address gender-based inequalities and forms of injustices, especially for women human rights defenders and sexual violence survivors. She also works on strengthening feminist movements organizing and tactics for mobilization, women’s participation in politics, feminist movements mobilizations, feminist education, and feminist funding and resources mobilization for Egypt and the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA). Hassan serves as a Global Fund for Women Board Member and on advisory boards of other local, regional and international feminist organizations in the MENA region. She also conducts gender and feminist assessments, evaluations and gender policies consultations in Egypt and the MENA region. She has received many awards, amongst them the Global Fund for Women’s inaugural Charlotte Bunch Women Human Rights Defenders Award in 2013. Hassan and Nazra were jointly awarded the Right Livelihood Awards, often called the “Alternative Nobel Peace Prize”, in 2016, “for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination”. In 2020, Hassan received the Hrant Dink Award for peace, rights and equality and is one of the Shecurity Index Women Peace Leaders in the world.

Helen Rizzo

Helen Rizzo is an associate professor of sociology in the Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology Department currently serving as the sociology unit head at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She is also the academic director of the Tomorrow’s Leaders Gender Scholars undergraduate scholarship program, and serves on the advisory committee of the Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at AUC. She has numerous publications on women’s rights in Kuwait. Her book, Islam, Democracy and the Status of Women: The Case of Kuwait, was published in 2005 by Routledge Press. Her more recent projects include working with colleagues from anthropology and media studies on a British Academy Small Grants funded project, titled Youth Perspectives on Gender Norms and Public Sexual Violence in Cairo: Cultural and Media Perspectives, in addition to research focusing on activism against public sexual violence in Egypt including issues of masculinities. She is the co-editor of Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges (2020) with Lynne Rienner Publishers which was selected as a 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. It was among 531 books and digital resources chosen by the CHOICE editorial staff from among the over 3,500 titles reviewed by Choice in 2020. Rizzo has also volunteered in the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights campaign titled Making Our Streets Safe for Everyone and worked as a research consultant with Harassmap, an initiative to end the social acceptability of sexual harassment in Egypt.