Between April 2020 and November 2025, at least 327 people were prosecuted in 252 cases for alleged violations of so-called “family values,” according to a scathing new report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Egyptian authorities have used the vague and politically charged notion of “family values” to justify a sweeping crackdown on the poor and working-class women, the report found.
Titled “Disciplining Society,” the report details how state institutions, particularly the police and judiciary, have deployed Article 25 of the 2018 Cybercrime Law to criminalize personal expression and digital presence, in what EIPR calls a campaign of classist and gendered repression.
Though the gender split among defendants was nearly equal—164 women and 163 men—the targeting was far from neutral.
The vast majority of those arrested were from impoverished or lower-middle-class backgrounds. The report finds that individuals producing content in Arabic, often humorous or expressive, were punished harshly, while similar material in English or with “upper class” aesthetics drew no police scrutiny.
Summer 2025 marked the height of the campaign, with 167 arrests in less than four months, including 107 women. What began as arrests of TikTok creators expanded to include tattoo artists, comedians, and even people filming in abandoned buildings. The campaign, once centered in Cairo, had by then spread to 17 governorates.
Women were disproportionately punished for violating narrow standards of public modesty, while men were targeted for deviating from traditional masculine norms, whether in dress, behavior, or presumed sexuality. The crackdown, the report argues, seeks to impose a state-mandated vision of gender and class conformity.
The EIPR report denounces Article 25 as a legal bludgeon, noting that its vague language around “undermining family values” has enabled courts to rely on personal writings and subjective judgments by individual judges rather than clear statutory definitions. This, the group warns, opens the door to arbitrary rulings.
In many cases, prosecutors escalated charges to include money laundering or human trafficking, in what the report describes as a deliberate strategy to manufacture moral panic and frame defendants as existential threats to the social fabric.
State institutions, particularly the public prosecution and the Ministry of Interior, actively amplified this panic by publishing defendants’ names, photos, and personal details before any conviction—often using overtly moralistic and punitive language rather than legal terminology.
Public officials—including the prime minister—have further legitimized the repression by linking social media use to so-called threats to “national social security,” granting political cover to this punitive campaign.
International human rights bodies have repeatedly criticized Egypt for abusing loosely written laws to suppress expression, especially when aimed at women and marginalized groups. UN committees have called for repealing these provisions and safeguarding digital freedoms.
EIPR concludes that this ongoing campaign constitutes a violation of Egypt’s constitutional protections and binding international commitments. The group calls for an immediate halt to the prosecutions and a comprehensive legal overhaul to dismantle surveillance and moral policing laws.
Recent examples underscore the scale of repression: Since August 2025, the Interior Ministry has arrested multiple women TikTok creators, including Umm Mekka, Umm Sajda, and “Suzy the Jordanian,” citing “indecent language,” “public immorality,” and “suspicious wealth” as grounds for prosecution.
