A year into Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s time in office, the former armed forces chief sailed in a yacht up the newly expanded Suez Canal. The $8 billion project, slated to take three years, was finished in just one. Egypt was euphoric. This was the jolt a sluggish economy needed to achieve its potential. The bigger canal, which now enabled two-way traffic, was the result of a “huge effort” by Egyptians, said El-Sisi, to “give the world this gift.”

That was in 2015. A little over seven years later, the Egyptian economy lies in tatters. The canal project, a white elephant, is now a symbol of El-Sisi’s failed economic policies and his inability to deliver on his grand proclamations.

Alongside Egypt’s economic crisis — exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — is an ongoing human rights crisis that is receiving far less attention. 

On March 5, an Egyptian court sentenced over a dozen activists to prison, a decision that human rights groups around the world described as unwarranted and unjust. According to Human Rights Watch, the sentences were the outcome of “an unfair mass trial of 29 men and women solely because of their peaceful activism.” Many of these activists are subject to extended pre-trial detention periods and denied due process.