By Wafaa Morsi | Issue 25
Although the right to work and access to decent work for refugees and asylum seekers in their host countries are crucial for their survival and protection, many refugees in Egypt face barriers to entering the formal labour market due to structural, legal, and societal reasons. As of June 2024, Egypt hosts 672,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers from 62 countries, with Sudanese being the largest group. There are no refugee camps in Egypt, as a result most refugees live and work alongside the host communities in urban areas of Cairo and the North Coast.
The current legal framework for labour rights of foreigners in Egypt does not differentiate between refugees and other foreigners who might have travelled on their own accord for better opportunities. The Labour Law (12) of (2003) for Regulating the Employment of Foreigners in the Egyptian Constitution regulates the employment of foreigners – including refugees and asylum seekers – based on four conditions: (1) ensuring reciprocity, (2) securing a visa, (3) obtaining a work permit, and (4) remaining within the legal limit of foreign employees. In addition, Egypt made reservations on Article 24 of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol for the refugees’ right to work. These are a set of mutual rights and obligations between the host state and refugees as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions to guarantee the right of work and livelihood to individuals regardless of citizenship status.
Such reservations mean that refugees and nationals are not granted the same opportunities of legal employment in Egypt. This poses various obstacles for most refugees to secure a valid visa or obtain work permits that have highly restrictive criteria, burdensome issuance costs, and complicated procedures for both workers and employers. For Palestinian refugees, the condition of reciprocity cannot be met since the Occupied Palestinian Territories do not have the authority to allow the employment of Egyptian nationals, and hence the Palestinian refugees are excluded from legal employment altogether.
Access to the labour market in developing countries such as Egypt is challenging for both host communities as well as refugees and asylum seekers. The labour force in host communities also suffer from high rates of unemployment, especially with the rapidly growing population and the ongoing economic crisis facing Egypt. The tension between refugees and host communities are on the rise as the Egyptian Pound continuously depreciates in value, with salaries failing to catch up to the sharp increase in prices and therefore lowering the living standards of host communities who are mainly of low-income status and struggling to navigate such deterioration of their own well-being. Consequently, this has led to misdirected frustration towards the refugees who are merely trying to survive in a new environment after being displaced.
As a result, many refugees are left with no choice but to seek employment in the informal sector – also known as the shadow economy – subjecting them to discriminative and exploitative working conditions. The vulnerabilities that refugees in such a sector face include but are not limited to unstable employment arrangements, lack of social protection and health insurance, occupational safety and health (OSH) risks as well as insufficiently low wages. As such, refugees are dependent on aid and assistance which drains the resources of the host country and donor agencies that provide them with cash assistance and other support, leading to unsustainable aid programmes and pressure on an already struggling economy.
According to the ILO, “the successful integration into the labour market is usually the result of joint efforts and coordination among a variety of actors and stakeholders at the local, regional and national levels”. Policies, regulations and legislative reforms, along with the support of civil society organisations (CSOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), need to ensure effective social protection mechanisms to protect refugees from unjust and hazardous conditions of work as well as promote a dignified life for all.
Policies and interventions can target the problem of informality as a whole in parallel with expanding social protection mechanisms for informal labour from both refugee and host communities as well as social cohesion programmes to help reduce the tensions caused by various socioeconomic and racial factors between the two communities.
Wafaa Morsi
Wafaa is a master’s student at the University of Florence studying development economics with a focus on international cooperation and migration. Wafaa is also a young impact evaluation professional with experience in conducting research and impact evaluations for programmes and interventions aimed for refugees and asylum seekers.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/wafaa-morsi
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