Egypt must act to avoid repeat rockslide disaster: report

Amnesty says Egypt's poor still live in peril

Little has changed in Egypt to move the poor from unsafe places and prevent a repetition of a rockslide in a Cairo shantytown that killed more than 100 people last year, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

The London-based rights group also criticized the government for resettling families far from places of work and without consultation, often in the presence of security services.

"Thousands of Egypt's poor are trapped by poverty and neglect that could ultimately end in their deaths," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa director.

"The government must urgently address the risks faced by those living in areas designated as 'unsafe' and find solutions by consulting with those directly affected," he said.

"Egypt's poor should not have to live any longer with the threat of being buried alive," he added. The rockslide in September 2008 killed more than 100 people when huge boulders crushed their ramshackle dwellings in al-Duwaiqa on Cairo's eastern outskirts. Residents at the time estimated up to 600 bodies were not recovered.

"The tragedy in al-Duwaiqa was a disaster waiting to happen. And that was well known," Smart said, citing government studies after a nearby rock-fall in 1993.

Dangerous areas

At the time, residents blamed the disaster on work that had been going on for several weeks on the Moqattam plateau overlooking the shantytown, and said the authorities had been warned of the dangers of just such a disaster.

While the government launched an investigation immediately after last year's rockslide, no findings have yet been announced, Amnesty said.

Amnesty said authorities later identified other dangerous areas and demolished more than 1,000 threatened homes, re-housing more than 1,750 families within a month.

But the rights group said residents are liable to eviction, and the allocation of new housing discriminated against women who were divorced or living apart from their husbands.

"Slum dwellers describe a life characterized by deprivation, neglect, insecurity and the constant threat of forcible eviction," Smart said.

"The state must guarantee their right to adequate housing and put an end to forced evictions."

Some of the poorest districts of Egypt's capital have a population density of 100,000 people per square mile (41,000 per square km), and people live in informal neighborhoods on state-owned land with minimal services.

Amnesty estimates that more than 1 billion people throughout the world live in slums, and the number is growing.