Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), in collaboration with the European Union (EU), kicked off a series of cultural salons examining how global inequality is remaking human rights’ meaning and practice, a statement by the NCHR said on Tuesday, September 16th, 2025.
The session, titled Citizen–Human Rights in the Age of Global Inequality, focused on a policy paper by Egyptian writer and political thinker Samir Morcos.
It was attended by NCHR president Ambassador Mahmoud Karem; Executive Director of the EU project, Dr Magdy Abdel-Hamid; advisor to Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Dr Amr El-Shobaki; and NCHR council member and secretary of the cultural committee, Ezzat Ibrahim.
A number of intellectuals, civil society members, and media professionals also attended.
Karem described the NCHR as viewing the salon series as a move from its classical monitoring and documentation function towards establishing civic space for discussion among academics, policymakers, and the public.
According to him, human rights should be addressed as a matter of societal concern that cuts across political, economic, and cultural issues.
Morcos claimed that ecological and climatic crises have become inextricable from other battles for social and economic justice, as he cautioned that the monopolistic economic actions of global powers entrenched new inequalities.
He noted that the 20th century witnessed a reorganization of global systems, institutionalizing the “one percent society,” with power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a select few.
He urged separating citizenship rights, based in the nation-state, from universal human rights, which he asserted are still unachieved by many. Connecting these tracks, he contended, is what is needed to construct a fairer social contract.
