Although there are many human rights organizations in Egypt concerned with various features of human rights, the issue of human rights violations does not receive the appropriate attention especially in the increase of prisoners in recent times.

Because of the sensitivity and important of this case, it was essential to find a special mechanism to monitor, oversee and records the reasons of these violations and seeking to find practical solutions. These mechanisms have to enjoy speciality and concentration in human rights field and monitoring prisons conditions and exerting more efforts on all levels and organizing seminars, training courses and awareness researches to these rights and providing recommendations and issuing scientific and academic studies on the current philosophy in prisons and seeking to promote them and pushing them in field of respecting human rights to be in line with modern penal philosophies that aim at the rehabilitation and improvement of prisoners and reintegrate them into society yet again in a sound way to make society benefit from this idle power in order not to be a threatening danger to the stability of society.

Moreover, there was urgent need to train workers and officers in prisons on ways of treating prisoners and the necessary to change the suspicious view to a humanitarian view that helps to change prisoners' conditions and change the attitude of society and state especially to political prisoners.

Because the Egyptian prisons witness appalling conditions on all levels and fields such as the bad living and social conditions necessary to prisoners and that resulted in the death of tens and the loss of the main role of prisons as a disciplinary institute seeking to rehabilitate prisoners to reintegrate into normal life again.

Consequently, it was necessary to reconsider the penal philosophy and the current prisons regulations and change completely its concept to be in line with the due respect to human dignity and conform to all international and legal rules.

for that reason the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP), established in 1997 as a non-governmental organization concerned with monitoring and defending human rights, advocates reform of the Egyptian penal system to bring them into conformity with international laws and conventions signed by Egypt, including the standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Convention Against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Mohamed Zarei, the founder and executive director of HRAAP, was inspired to develop the program because of his intense personal experience. While he was a law student at Cairo University, he became a victim of unlawful arrest, torture and detention for two months because of his political views and activities. Later, he qualified as a lawyer, worked with the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) for a few years and then established HRAAP.

Over the past years, HRAAP has implemented an extensive program to monitor and gather information on Egyptian prisons, compiled research and publicized its findings and recommendations. HRAAP operated for many years as a civil company registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Last July, HRAAP received authorization from the Ministry of Social Affairs to register as a nonprofit, civil association under the 2003 Law of Associations under registration No. 1820/2003, thereby changing its status from a center for human rights to an association.

OBJECTIVES

- To develop the Egyptian legal system in order to ensure its conformity with the Convention Against Torture, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and to seek all  possible ways to implement these international standards.
- To monitor and gather information regarding torture cases in Egyptian prisons, police stations and detention places. Then, to analyse this information and suggest recommendations that would prevent the spread of torture. 
- To provide legal aid to torture victims.
- To raise awareness among lawyers, those working in penal institutions and citizens in general concerning torture prevention. 
- To call for improvements to the living, social and medical condition of prisoners, and to call for the amendment of laws regulating prisons, in order to bring them into conformity with the standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. 
- To provide the necessary data to establish a database on torture cases and ways to address such cases and prevent their spread, as well encourage researchers and scholars to conduct analytical and applied studies on torture cases and methods. 
- To attempt to make prisons places of true correction and rehabilitation that assist prisoners to reintegrate into society after serving their sentence