A City Not Meant for All - Retrieving the Right to Mobility in Egypt
Project Budget
EU Contribution
Countries
Partners
EVENTS
EVENTS
MEDIA
A City Not Meant for All: Retrieving the Right to Mobility in Egypt
Consider what it would mean to live in a world that was never designed with your needs in mind!
- Across Egypt’s vast expanse and urban landscapes, the ability to move freely through public spaces remains an indispensable, fundamental, yet unevenly conceived right!
- Envision living in a city that was never constructed for you, one which consistently and persistently reminds you that every step outside of your door threshold is a dreadful reality, one tainted with an erratic, unforeseeable pathway. You ought to traverse the city streets that were never built for your needs with deliberate caution, fearing the uneven pavements, the street’s abrupt vertical curbs, that rarely allows for safe means of crossing for you. This vision is not a mere hypothetical scenario, but rather a lived reality for 12-15 million persons in Egypt!
- Millions of individuals with physical and sensory disabilities in Egypt everyday continue to face challenges in getting to their respective work, educational institutions, accessing public services and transportation, or even the mere act of visiting a fellow friend! This isn’t a mere matter of convenience, but rather, it’s an arduous challenge that is tainted with incertitude, imminent danger, and psychological drainage. Approximately 10.5% of Egyptians aged five and over have a narrow disability, with 2.5% having middle disabilities, and 0.5% have a broad disability according to CAPMAS. Disability has a variety of effects on people’s function, quality of life, and social engagement.
- While urban cities in Egypt continue to expand and modernize, the inadequate infrastructure sculpturing everyday life still portrays an essential negligence: the absence of safe, continuous, and accessible mobility lanes for persons with disabilities (PwD). For the vast crowds of Egyptians living with physical or sensory impairments, specially, in urban cities, remains a daily confrontation with physical barriers that are entrenched in the very architecture of the cities’ streets spanning from the narrow side lanes, lack of dropped kerbs, obstructions, inaccessible crossings, to pavements parkings, which thereby impinge their mobility rights, rendering it more challenging to wander around cities on their own, which may culminate in gravely affecting their inclusion and integration, and exacerbating exclusion and adversely affect their mental health.
- Consequently, PwD’s independence, social involvement, health, and safety are all jeopardised owing to an inaccessible built environment, which ultimately denies them equal rights inside the city!
Egypt’s Progress on Disability Rights:
- Over the past decade, Egypt has made significant advancement in strengthening the rights of people with disabilities at different levels, including constitutional, legal, political, social, and institutional. These improvements developed a framework for empowering individuals in accordance with the Egyptian Constitution, ensuring their rights and access to essential services.
- With regards to the legislative and legal frameworks established in recent years, particularly the 2014 Constitution and Law No. 10 of 2018, which lay a firm foundation for the rights of people with disabilities. These rules prioritise accessibility and integration, requiring public facilities to be tailored to the requirements of all citizens.
- Egypt’s commitment has long been evidenced in a diverse array of initiatives, encompassing the presidential initiative “Inclusion, Empowerment, Participation” in 2016 to empower PwD and 2018 was proclaimed as the “Year of Persons with Disabilities.” In 2019, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi issued Decree No. 11, inaugurating the “National Council for Persons with Disabilities,” an initiative dedicated to advancing, improving, and safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities, reflecting the country’s broader commitment to inclusivity and protection, as well as, the “Differently Abled Fund” under Law No. 200 of 2020 to assist PwD. Furthermore, extensive efforts were introduced by the Ministry of Social Solidarity, aspiring to unveil integrated smart cards to enhance access to services for people with disabilities, including discounts on transportation and other government transactions.
- Additionally, comprehensive and extensive round table discussions and sessions were conducted in the 12th edition of the World Urban Forum (WUF12), with the dedication of enhancing urban development for persons with disabilities, along with proposing sustainable solutions inclusive smart city technologies.
The Mediterranean Youth Foundation for Development – MYF calls on the Ministry of Ministry of Housing, Utilities & Urban Communities, Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Local Development, Ministry of Social Solidarity, The Egyptian Parliament, and all relevant ministries, and The National Council for Persons with Disabilities, and The National Council for Human Rights, to translate commitment into sustained, tangible endeavors and advance with deliberate, coordinated, and accountable action.
While we recognize and deeply value the profound and extensive endeavors undertaken by the relevant ministries and national councils. MYF advocates for a further cohesive and results-oriented approach, that ensures convenience as a primary foundation for urban development, where infrastructure is delineated, implemented, and sustained to assist persons with disabilities equitably. This ought to be initiated through assurance of close coordination with oversight of relevant bodies such as the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, along with the pertinent ministries and stakeholders, to advance their efforts, through a multi-faceted approach, through the following endeavours:
1- To studiously enhance accessibility, we ought to conduct and rely on a comprehensive accessibility needs mapping for PwD, where community evaluations are conducted to identify accessibility deficiencies, with an emphasis on key aspects such as restrooms, pathways, transportation, roadway crossings, and gathering spaces. Community-driven mapping or digital tools assist in recognising priority actions and inform specific design improvements.
Furthermore, organizing community-centered design workshops that proactively involve people with disabilities, carers, and local leaders, through utilizing tactile mapping or role-playing to visualise difficulties and collaborate on practical solutions, increasing inclusion and community buy-in.
2- Embracing an inclusive approach towards integrating PwD through adopting the Universal Design (UD) concept and meeting the seven principles of Universal Design in the development of a friendly built environment for everyone, ensuring equitable, flexible, simple, intuitive use and the design’s tolerance for error in minimizing the adverse consequences of accidents or unintended actions, and that any design ought to communicate necessary information effectively to the user, and that an appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of the user’s body size, posture, or mobility, and ensuring that the design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue. Universal Design aims to ensure that products, environments, programs, and services are accessible to all people without requiring adaptations or specialised design, with consideration of the economic, cultural, engineering, environmental, gender, and social contexts. These extensive and comprehensive standards ought to be in conjunction with clear and explicit compliance mechanisms, as well as, an accessibility audit in facilities management for enhancing inclusive access. The auditing process is intended to assess and enhance any facility’s accessibility so that all users, including those with impairments, can utilize it, which would eventually increase inclusivity, strengthen safety and risk management, cost efficiency, and operational efficiency.