Egypt’s Lawyers Syndicate has referred lawyer Nessma AlKhatib, director of the “Sanad Initiative for the Legal Support of Women,” to an urgent disciplinary investigation on June 10, 2026, over a Facebook post in which she called for the physical and medical protection of sex workers, citing the health risks they face.
Lawyers Syndicate board member Rabie El-Mallawany told Al Manassa the syndicate has the authority to resist what he described as “deviant ideas,” arguing that Nessma’s post went beyond freedom of opinion and amounted to incitement to “the crime of prostitution,” which is punishable under Egyptian law.
In the now-deleted post, the feminist activist initiated a discussion about the conditions of sex workers, saying “the phenomenon already exists and should be approached from a rights-based and feminist perspective.”
She asked whether these women had the right to protection from the state, answering “yes,” and proposed mechanisms to protect and raise awareness among them. These measures included “regular medical checkups” and guaranteeing their legal right to report assaults, saying the women need a legal framework to protect them.
Explaining the syndicate’s decision, El-Mallawany said they had received complaints from lawyers who expressed anger over the post, adding that calling for health and legal care for sex workers amounted to “legalizing prostitution and undermining society’s values.”
El-Mallawany based the referral decision on the law regulating the legal profession, which gives the syndicate the right to strike lawyers from its rolls for acts deemed “prejudicial to honor and reputation.” The syndicate’s role was to protect society from ideas outside the bounds of religion and criminal law, he asserted.
“What she wrote falls outside freedom of opinion and outside any legitimate framework in the first place. Her post incites the crime of prostitution, which is banned under Egyptian law,” El-Mallawany told Al Manassa.
He continued, “opinion is when we disagree over a certain issue, but when a lawyer publicly demands medical examinations and care for people who practice prostitution, this becomes the explicit legalization of prostitution. At this point, what she said is no longer merely an opinion or an idea, but an approach that destroys society in its entirety,” arguing that “the post is no longer personal once it has been published publicly and circulated by dozens of websites.”
In response, AlKhatib said she was disturbed by the referral decision, which she learned about through the media, telling Al Manassa she had not yet received any official notification.
Nessma accused the syndicate of being swept along by a “sensationalist press,” which she said distorted her words to generate “media noise,” arguing that the investigation amounted to “unlawful guardianship” over lawyers’ personal opinions.
The director of the Sanad Initiative argued that the syndicate’s oversight role is limited to a lawyer’s relationship with clients or colleagues, rather than what they write on their personal social media accounts.
“An investigation should only happen if I fail a client, disclose a client’s secrets, or attack a client or a fellow lawyer. The syndicate has the right to investigate all these things. But opinions written on our personal accounts are not something they have the right to impose guardianship over or question us about.”
Nessma denied calling for the legalization of prostitution, as several newspapers and websites reported. “I said sexually transmitted diseases are more prevalent among sex workers, and that they are more deserving of health care to protect the rest of society,” she said, an idea she clarified further in a later post.
Nessma also told Al Manassa had been subjected to serious threats after several websites published her personal photos and a screenshot of her post under misleading headlines, adding that this amounted to explicit incitement jeopardizing her personal safety, alongside acts of insult, defamation, and slander.
