Read the full report here

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) today released the English-language edition of its report: Whose Values? Egypt’s Online Morality Policing Under the Banner of “Egyptian Family Values”. The report documents and analyzes five years of prosecutions for “violating Egyptian family values,” an offense first introduced in the 2018 Cybercrime Law. It examines how the charge has been used to target non-political digital content and criminalize forms of expression and behavior that were not previously punishable– primarily on the basis of class and gender biases.

Between April 2020 and the end of November 2025, at least 327 people were arrested in connection with 252 cases under this charge. The number of men and women targeted was almost identical: 163 men and 164 women. Cases were recorded across 17 governorates, demonstrating that this pattern of prosecution has developed into a nationwide public policy, whereas such incidents had previously been concentrated in the capital.

The report examines the latest wave of prosecutions, which took place during the summer of 2025. In less than four months, EIPR documented the arrests of at least 167 people in connection with 134 cases, nearly half of all cases recorded since this pattern of prosecution began in 2020.

Drawing on direct legal assistance, case monitoring, analysis of dozens of case files, and a review of official statements, prosecution arguments, and related media coverage, the report examines the methods underlying this pattern of criminalization. Within this framework, “social control” is exercised by manufacturing widespread moral panic, sometimes through appeals to “family values” and, at other times, through the use of serious charges such as “human trafficking” and “money laundering.” These practices cultivate public hostility toward digital content, including non-political content, portraying it as a threat to “social national security,” as described in Public Prosecution statements.

The report finds that the main factor shared by most of the accused is their use of the internet for self-expression or income-generating work, combined with their belonging to lower or lower-middle classes. The charges are closely linked to conduct that the state portrays as departing from ‘acceptable’ gender roles or from perceived ideals of how families, women, and men from these social classes should behave.

This pattern of prosecution also reflects a sustained official crackdown on opportunities for financial gain and, in some cases, upward social mobility. The report situates this targeting within a broader context of widespread frustration over the lack of decent and adequately paid employment; diminishing prospects for social mobility for most Egyptians; and the state’s increasingly prominent moral rhetoric about the family, its centrality, and its cohesion.

The report also analyzes the discourse of the state institutions involved, including the Public Prosecution and the Ministry of Interior. It traces the effects of a narrative of social panic that these institutions both generate and exploit. This includes explicit calls by the Public Prosecution for citizens to report content they consider inappropriate and the framing of such content as a threat to security and public morals. This discourse has opened the door to malicious complaints and has particularly facilitated the targeting of women and girls through coordinated reporting and accompanying hostile media campaigns.

Further included in the report is an analysis of the reliance by security and judicial authorities’ on articles 25 and 27 of the Cybercrime Law (Law No. 175 of 2018). The articles concern, respectively, “violating Egyptian family values” and “creating, managing, or using an account for the purpose of committing a crime.” It assesses judicial attempts to address fundamental questions: What constitutes “family values”? How can the criminalization of an undefined act be regulated? And how has a concept that is not defined in any legislative text or interpretive guidance nevertheless become a recurring basis for prosecution?

Additionally, the report analyzes how Article 27 has been applied beyond its original scope, functioning as a mechanism for exacting aggravated penalties solely because an alleged offense occurred online. It documents court rulings that have sought to restrict or expand the criminalization of online content and examines the broader conflation of internet use with “crime,” regardless of the nature of the alleged act.

The report concludes that, in only five years, the charge of “violating Egyptian family values” has evolved from a legal exception into one of the most frequently used tools of digital prosecution. It argues that this development reflects the consolidation of a new system of social control in which the authority to interpret morality is used to determine what constitutes acceptable digital expression, attire, and behavior - particularly for the broadest segments of Egyptian society and in the absence of any clear legal definition of either “values” or the “Egyptian family.”

Based on these findings, the report argues that these practices cannot be understood merely as the impartial application of a law whose provisions are characterized by vague and highly malleable language. Rather, they form part of a broader project to control the public sphere and preserve a hierarchical social order structured along class and gender lines, with criminal law serving as a central instrument of that project.

Read the full report here