Incidents of violence against women reported to authorities or covered by media in Egypt jumped 20.81% during the first six months of 2026 compared to the same period last year, a human rights organization said in a report released Tuesday.
The Edraak Foundation for Development and Equality documented 598 crimes of violence against women and girls between Jan. 1 and June 30, up from 495 incidents recorded during the same timeframe in 2025.
However, the foundation stressed that the figures “do not represent the true extent of violence, but merely reflect cases reported or uncovered and published in media or official statements. Many violations still fail to reach reporting bodies, and survivors’ voices remain unheard.”
Shaimaa Fekry, head of the foundation’s gender-based violence monitoring and research unit, told Al Manassa that the organization tracks only cases documented in official complaints. “If we look at social media outside official police reports, we would find terrifying numbers…triple what we have documented,” Fekry said.
She noted that technology has played a double-edged role in documenting complaints and increasing their frequency. “Why did more people report? Because we now have new tools like social media, video recording, and crime documentation,” Fekry said. “Just as technology facilitates digital violence, it also helps people report or document it.”
Sexual harassment topped the list of recorded abuses, accounting for 141 incidents or 23.58% of total crimes. Murders of women and girls followed with 118 crimes (19.73%), while severe beatings resulting in various injuries accounted for 115 cases.
The report documented 80 murders of women and girls in domestic violence contexts. Husbands were the primary perpetrators with 35 cases, followed by fathers with 10 cases, as well as ex-husbands, sons, and stepfathers.
Edraak said the report aims to provide an analytical reading of violence directed at women and girls, noting that documented cases fall short of actual levels due to a scarcity of detailed, regular official data.
The group called for the creation of periodic, detailed official databases to monitor violence against women and girls, arguing that accurate data is essential to support effective public policies and protection programs. It also called for improving media coverage of gender-based violence and strengthening prevention, protection, and response mechanisms to end impunity for perpetrators and enable women and girls to report incidents and access justice.
Shaimaa Fekry emphasized that tackling violence against women requires a national mechanism to monitor, document, and share data, alongside early preventive interventions to address abuse before it escalates into severe harm.
On July 8, four feminist organizations announced that lawmaker Maha Abdel Nasser adopted a draft “Unified Law to Combat Violence Against Women and Girls,” initiating steps to place it on the House of Representatives’ legislative agenda in the upcoming session.
The bill seeks to address rising rates of violence affecting roughly 8 million women and girls in Egypt annually, according to 2023 estimates by the country’s central statistics agency.
Data from the 2021 Egyptian Family Health Survey shows that 31% of women experienced domestic violence by husbands in all forms, with 25.5% subjected to physical violence, 22.3% to psychological abuse, and 5.6% to sexual violence.
