Committee for Justice (CFJ)
Geneva – December 2025
Geneva – December 2025
In the context of rapidly shifting human rights landscapes in the region – marked by a shrinking civic space and constant changes in how and where human rights work can be funded – Committee for Justice (CFJ), like many independent human rights organisations, is facing a series of accumulating challenges. These challenges have affected its ability to sustain some programs and projects in their previous form, and have made it necessary to reassess strategic priorities in order to safeguard the continuity of CFJ’s core work on documentation, accountability, and support to victims.
Within this context, CFJ has been compelled to close or suspend a number of projects that had been implemented in recent years, including its project on workers’ rights and labour conditions in Egypt. This project played an important role in documenting violations committed against workers, especially in highly precarious and repressive environments. The decision to discontinue it, in its previous format, is the result of several interrelated factors, including:
- the tightening of the legal and operational space for independent human rights work in Egypt and across the region;
- security and protection concerns affecting partners, beneficiaries and field teams;
- shifts in donor priorities that have produced funding gaps and required a difficult reallocation of limited resources;
- the need to focus efforts on other strategic tracks, such as comprehensive documentation of grave violations and engagement with African and UN accountability mechanisms.
In this regard, Committee for Justice wishes to underline the following:
- The closure or suspension of any project does not mean abandoning its issues. It is, instead, a reorganisation of resources and capacities. CFJ will strive to preserve, where possible, key research and documentation elements within its priority files, including economic and social rights and the situation of workers and precarious labour.
- All information and data collected under the workers’ rights project in Egypt remain an integral part of CFJ’s knowledge base. These materials will continue to inform reports, legal analyses, advocacy interventions and submissions to international and regional mechanisms, where circumstances allow and with full regard to the safety of victims, witnesses and sources.
- Within the constraints imposed by security risks and available resources, CFJ will continue to integrate workers’ issues and economic and social rights into its broader work, notably through:
- ongoing monitoring and documentation via CFJ platforms and tools;
- legal memoranda and reports submitted to UN and African mechanisms;
- advocacy efforts coordinated with local, regional and international partners.
- The financial, administrative and security pressures facing independent human rights organisations are not a purely internal matter. They are part of a broader attack on human rights in the region, aimed at drying up support for civil society and weakening its ability to continue its work—particularly in sensitive areas such as workers’ rights, economic rights and public freedoms.
At the same time, Committee for Justice is working to:
- develop a medium-term strategy to restructure its programs in a way that safeguards the core of its work on documentation and accountability, while preserving – as far as possible – an integrated approach linking civil and political rights with economic and social rights;
- explore new partnerships and coalitions that might, in future, enable the resumption or redevelopment of affected components, in a manner consistent with CFJ’s independence, transparency and human rights-based approach;
- continue public advocacy on the impact of repression on human rights organisations and on how shifting funding priorities directly affect the protection of victims and the most marginalised groups.
By sharing these realities with its partners and the broader public, Committee for Justice:
- reaffirms its principled commitment to victims and marginalised groups, including workers, who continue to face serious violations in the absence of effective national remedies;
- stresses that it will continue, to the fullest extent possible within existing constraints, to keep workers’ rights and economic and social rights visible within its research, documentation and advocacy before international and regional mechanisms;
- and calls on its partners, supporters and all those concerned with human rights to sustain and deepen solidarity and cooperation in confronting these structural challenges, so that victims’ voices remain heard and the struggle for justice and an end to impunity can continue.