The EU's Role in Promoting Women's Rights in Egypt

The EU and Egypt as key partners are deepening their relations within the framework of the EMP and ENP. In this partnership the EU has a long standing commitment to promote women’s rights and gender equality, which is reflected in the EU-Egypt Action Plan. In this regard, the EU has developed some instruments to reinforce this process, such as the European Instrument for Democratization and Human Rights (EIDHR). Women’s accession to the judiciary in Egypt has been a hot button issue among judges for at least 10 years, between those who are pro and anti women judges within the judicial reform movements. Thus, as a reaction to such issue, the EIDHR came to support the domestic "Campaign for Women Judges" in Egypt. Despite the positive impact of the EIDHR, there were few drawbacks and obstacles that hindered partially the effectiveness of such instrument. The success and the drawbacks of EIDHR were influenced by two groups of factors: "external factors" related to the EU policy design to fit within the Egyptian Institutions, and "internal factors" related to the response of the Egyptian institutions and how they implement women’s rights programmes adopted and funded by the EU.