HRW: Egypt authorities are undermining environmental groups ahead of UN climate conference News
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HRW: Egypt authorities are undermining environmental groups ahead of UN climate conference

Human Rights Watch Monday reported that the Egyptian government is severely curtailing environmental groups’ ability to carry out independent policy, advocacy and field work essential to protecting the country’s natural environment. The report comes as Egypt prepares to host the 2022 UN climate conference (COP27) in November.

Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with staff members of critical human rights and environmental groups; many said they are wary of publicly engaging at COP27 and fear government reprisal. The concern is heightened because the most significant environmental issues in Egypt are a result of government and military activities. The report also raised issues like restrictions on funding, harassment of environmental groups, challenges registering organisations and research obstacles due to strict permit requirements.

Following an interview with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in May, 36 organizations released a statement asking the government to ease its grip on civic space and uphold the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly to ensure a successful climate summit.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

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On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.