The ninth session of the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in Sharm El Sheikh convened a panel titled “Beyond Covid-19”, where Khaled Abdul Rahman, Deputy head of the Administrative Control Authority for the affairs of the National Anti Corruption Academy, delivered a speech highlighting Egypt’s strides towards combating corruption as follows:
Egypt has taken rigorous social and economic measures to curb the repercussions of COVID-19. Since governance and corruption are integral to these measures, The Egyptian government has fostered an institutional approach to tackle the pandemic by enhancing governance and combating corruption in line with the relevant recommendations of international organizations. This shall represent the institutional framework for addressing the COVID-19 crisis and the key governance and anti-corruption-related measures undertaken by the Egyptian government.
The Egyptian government enjoys a well- established institutional framework for tackling crises as represented in The Crisis/ Disaster Management and Disaster Risk Reduction Sector at the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), as well as the The Supreme Ministerial Committee for Crisis and Disaster Management chaired by the H.E. Prime Minister. The Council of Governors headed by the Prime Minister is the mechanism by which crises are handled within different governorates, for it reviews the Committee’s decisions and follows up on the implementation process across governorates. As for the legislative authority, The health committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate carry out periodic follow up on the Government’s performance with regards to the overall healthcare decisions and the efficient provision of vaccines.
The rapid spread of the pandemic has posed immense challenges to many countries and prompted governments to design and implement emergency policies in response to the abrupt event. Many international and regional organizations and donors strived to provide recommendations to governments on the policies and procedures that should be adopted to mitigate the economic and financial repercussions of the pandemic. In the same vein, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development in Egypt introduced the “Covid-19 Policy Tracker” to provide public access to the stimulus packages that were adopted in response to the pandemic for individuals, corporates, or vulnerable sectors.
The Egyptian Government was keen on maintaining transparency and leading gender- sensitive crisis management policies through the “Women policy Tracker on Responsive Policies and Programs during the New COVID-19 Pandemic”. The National Council for Women has prepared a policy paper on Egypt’s rapid response to women’s situation during COVID-19 outbreak. The paper included an analysis of women’s status quo and a range of proposed response measures addressing a sundry of challenges posed by COVID-19 in health, education, social protection, violence against women, women’s representation in decision-making during the crisis, equal distribution of economic opportunities, and data and knowledge dissimentation. These woman-centric measures have invoked UN Women and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to commend the measures taken by the Egyptian Government in the COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker, where Egypt ranked first in North Africa and West Asia in terms of measures pertaining to "women's economic security, unpaid care work (UCW), and combating violence against women and girls (VAW)."
In line with international recommendations, The Arab Republic of Egypt was diligent in optimizing technology to diversify the provision of services and the means to curb corruption. Hence, Egypt’s Cabinet utilized its Unified Complaints System to effectively receive and address individual and institutional COVID-19 related complaints through the Systems’s open access electronic portal.
In addition, the Egyptian Government has set clear and transparent criteria to identify vaccine priority groups and for the Egyptian Ministry of Health to follow in quest of a fair and equitable distribution of the vaccine.
Along the same lines, the Ministry of Health launched its application titled “Health of Egypt”, which includes updated information on the spread of the virus accompanied by instructions in the event of infection or following contact with an infected person. The application further informs users of the services available in healthcare units and facilitates reporting suspected infection. Moreover, an official website was dedicated to helping citizens register for the COVID-19 vaccine whilst identifying vaccination priority groups as well. Priority groups included “health workers, the elderly, and those with chronic health conditions.” The Ministry of Health further set up a hotline serving citizens who cannot register through the website. It is worth noting that the presidential initiative “100 Million Healthy Lives”, launched in 2018, has paved the way for this system thanks to the preexisting all-encompassing database the initiative secured for people with chronic diseases.
The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population also launched the “Egypt Health Passport'' application for various travel purposes. Registration is done using either national ID or passport number in order to secure authentication and deter corruption, especially that the application is linked to the vaccine registration system to identify each user’s vaccination status, dosage dates, and scheduled appointments
Egypt has also maintained a number of measures to regulate public procurements and allocate financial resources in a fair and transparent manner to tackle the pandemic. This comes in light of international recommendations to enhance public administration, procurement, and financial management systems; and to promote exchange control and publish the distribution of financial allocations to ensure accountability and transparency through vigilant monitoring of resource allocation in response to the pandemic.
The Egyptian Government, in cooperation with various media platforms, has launched several COVID-19 awareness campaigns.
Lastly, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, in cooperation with the civil society organization “Terous Misr Foundation”, and with the participation of a large number of business owners and CEOs, launched the “Egypt Shall Pass” campaign as the first popular initiative to alleviate the adverse economic effects of COVID-19 and promote job retention for vulnerable groups by stimulating private sector investments.