President El-Sisi Addresses Meeting for Chief Justices of African Constitutional and Supreme Courts

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi addresses the High-Level Meeting for Chief Justices and Presidents of African Constitutional and Supreme Courts and Constitutional Councils.

Honorable Judges,

Your Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me pleasure today to greet you, the finest legal minds on the continent of Africa, at a time when preparations are underway to receive you again in Cairo soon. It is a tradition that we have established over the past five years to bring together the higher judicial bodies in Africa under one umbrella in Cairo. Your meeting today is convened amid exceptional circumstances that ravaged the countries of the world. Africa, like the rest of the world, has faced many difficulties in dealing with the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hence, the current situation requires us to collectively think and reflect on how to deal, from a legal and constitutional perspective, with the challenges arising from the pandemic and other traditional challenges, chief among them is cooperation to combat terrorism that hinders the path of development and stability.

Thus, you need to make a contribution through the mechanisms of constitutional law to eliminate this imminent danger in every way possible, which will specially further support our endeavor to make Africa a great, harmonious and unified continent. I have no doubt that we all hope that these efforts would bring tremendous benefits to all African peoples and future generations of young men and women in our ancient continent.

The most important challenges resulting from the coronavirus pandemic are the rapidly accelerating and unprecedented trend toward digital transformation in our societies, the process of reforming and rehabilitating health care systems and the transition to a green economy. Dealing with these variables prompts deep reflection and thinking in order to ensure a modern constitutional infrastructure that is capable of addressing the emerging challenges.

This infrastructure includes the regulation of digital transactions and interaction for individuals and private entities, comprising setting the legal framework regulating many issues – the most important of which is information security – and providing the legal governance of social media and its content that greatly affects internal and external affairs. This is in addition to setting the legal frameworks for regulating electronic platforms and others for regulating the large databases and the personal information of our citizens.

In the past few years, the Arab Republic of Egypt has taken effective steps toward providing the necessary infrastructure to achieve the digital transformation of government services. These steps have had a positive impact on the quality of these services in various fields and ensured their speedy delivery to citizens, within the framework of a comprehensive vision toward achieving full digital transformation for the labor system and government services and encouraging the private sector to make that transformation as well. These steps have proven immensely significant amid the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

On the other hand, the process of developing and rehabilitating health care systems is one of the most important of these challenges as well. There are many ethical and legal dilemmas that impose themselves on that process in many matters, including the right to obtain health services: medication and necessary vaccinations, pricing and distribution processes, and legal rules regulating the processes of approving the licensing, testing, and production of medicines and vaccines, in light of the compelling emergency circumstances in which the pandemic is spreading. All of this necessitates the existence of well-established and clear constitutional and legal rules that contribute to the process of organizing the rules and procedures applied to meet the challenges posed by these exceptional circumstances.

Egypt had a comprehensive and systematic vision toward enhancing the health care system and improving the quality of its services that are provided to everyone. Since this system is one of the pillars and goals of sustainable development, concerned state agencies have worked to accelerate digital transformation in medical and therapeutic services so as to raise their levels according to the highest international standards. This would be achieved through developing the technological and institutional system for health care facilities and using them to implement national health projects, at the top of which is the Universal Health Insurance project that aims to provide health services to all Egyptian family members.

The transition to a green economy is also a major challenge to the countries of the African continent. They would have to face this transformation, which would quickly have an impact on the international trading system in a way that would negatively affect those countries that take no practical measures to achieve this transformation, thus triggering legal consequences.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The constitutions of our countries are living legal documents that guide and direct all legislative and legal efforts as well as economic and political activities in dealing with the various aforementioned challenges. They also must always be reviewed and updated to provide the best possible instruction and guidance to our peoples and societies, through dealing with a world whose features are developing in a rapidly changing economic, social, political and legal environment.

Accordingly, I invite you today, the finest African legal minds, to discuss these challenges when you visit Egypt next June and to consult with international experts and all competent international bodies and to work collectively toward establishing common African constitutional rules to deal with these challenges, thereby promoting our common vision toward building a united, harmonious, and prosperous future for Africa.

In this context, I also invite you to take advantage of the African judicial digital platform which was launched in Cairo, in accordance with the agreements that you have reached in your previous meetings, as a result of the discussions on these important issues in the interest of Africa and for the good of the future of its people.

Concluding my speech, I would like to wish your preparatory meeting success today. I look forward to seeing you all when you visit Egypt to attend your fifth high-level meeting soon, God willing.

Thank you for listening

Long live Egypt, and long live Africa

May Allah’s Peace, Mercy and Blessings Be Upon You.