Following new Egyptian government measures to streamline residency permit procedures for refugees and asylum seekers, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) is calling on the authorities to formally recognize documentation issued by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as valid proof of legal residency.

The new policy expands the Interior Ministry’s daily processing capacity for residency applications and decentralizes the process across 15 regional offices of the ministry’s Passports, Emigration and Nationality Department nationwide. Months-long delays between initial UNHCR registration and securing an appointment with the ministry currently leave tens of thousands of refugees in a precarious legal position, exposing them to arbitrary detention and unlawful deportation.

EIPR emphasizes that formally recognizing registration cards issued by UNHCR, as well as the credentials to be issued by Egypt’s recently-established Permanent Committee for Refugee Affairs, is the only effective way to address the severe administrative backlog. 

In late August, UNHCR announced that the Interior Ministry would increase its daily processing capacity for refugee residency permits from 1,000 to 1,500 applications. Under the new policy, the additional 500 applications per day will be processed across 15 regional passport offices outside Cairo, with each office handling up to 50 applications daily.

This marks the second expansion of daily processing capacity since April 2025, when the authorities raised the daily limit from 600 to 1,000 applications. It is also the first time the Interior Ministry has offered refugee residency services outside the capital, responding to long-standing calls to reduce the travel burden on refugees living in other governorates.

Previously, refugees living outside Cairo had to travel long distances to the main emigration department office in Abbassia simply to obtain appointments to renew their residency permits. Since 2024, such journeys have carried serious risks because of security campaigns targeting refugees. Over the past two years, security sweeps have resulted in the detention and deportation of tens of thousands of people, including registered refugees carrying official receipts showing that they were awaiting renewal appointments. Under the new protocol, UNHCR will assign applicants to regional offices based on their registered addresses.

While welcoming the decentralization as a positive step, EIPR cautions that the measures fail to address the main bottleneck: multi-year waits simply to obtain an application appointment. In areas with large refugee populations, appointment wait times reached as long as 20 months earlier this year, with many UNHCR cardholders given dates in late 2027 or early 2028.

EIPR stresses that any meaningful solution must also include ending arbitrary arrest campaigns and addressing their direct human rights consequences for displaced populations. Beyond the risk of forced return, or refoulement, the absence of valid residency status deprives refugees of access to essential services. Since 2024, state agencies have instructed healthcare and education providers to deny services to migrants who lack valid residency cards, effectively pushing refugees into irregular status because of administrative delays beyond their control.

With Egypt’s new Asylum Law taking effect on August 21, 2026, following the issuance of its bylaws, state authorities now bear greater legal responsibility for streamlining protection mechanisms and eliminating state-created administrative bottlenecks. While expanding regional processing infrastructure is a constructive step, EIPR argues that the most important measure remains granting full legal recognition to UNHCR documentation and to the credentials that will be issued by the Permanent Committee for Refugee Affairs. Such recognition would guarantee refugees access to essential rights without requiring them to navigate standard immigration procedures designed for foreign nationals who do not enjoy the protections afforded under international refugee law.

Under the pretext of verifying compliance with residency requirements, security forces have carried out broad crackdowns targeting migrants—particularly Sudanese nationals—in public transportation, workplaces, schools and other public spaces. Between January and June 2026 alone, rights organizations documented at least 8,000 cases of administrative detention involving refugees and asylum seekers, including people holding valid residency cards. Severe overcrowding in detention facilities has contributed to at least 27 recorded deaths. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that nearly 770,000 Sudanese returned to Sudan from Egypt between January 2024 and August 2026, making Egypt the primary country of departure for large-scale voluntary returns despite the continuing conflict in Sudan.

EIPR renews its call on the Egyptian authorities to use the transition to a state-managed asylum system as an opportunity to end punitive security crackdowns and restore Egypt’s historical role as a regional refuge for displaced people, dating back to its ratification of the 1951 Refugee Convention in 1954. The organization calls for the immediate release of all refugees held in administrative detention, an end to targeted security sweeps against Sudanese nationals and other asylum seekers, and strict compliance with the absolute prohibition on returning individuals to places where they face persecution or serious harm.

For further reading:

The Unprecedented Crackdown on Refugees and Migrants in Egypt

UN Communication Highlights Escalating Violations Against Refugees in Egypt