Campaign: I Want to Breathe
I want to breathe
A legal and humanitarian campaign to preserve the lives of detainees and ensure their fundamental right to life and health
In light of the harsh conditions thousands of detainees and prisoners endure inside Egyptian prisons and detention centers—conditions accompanied by a deterioration in health and medical neglect that threatens the lives of hundreds—Al-Shahab Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with a number of human rights institutions, families of detainees, and public figures, announces the launch of an expanded legal and humanitarian campaign titled #IWantToBreathe.
The campaign aims to express the suffering of detainees who are deprived of their most basic human rights, foremost among them the right to life, healthcare, ventilation, and breathing in a safe and healthy environment.
Campaign demands
🔴 Urgent and continuous ventilation
Opening ventilation outlets and operating fans and exhaust systems continuously, especially during heatwaves, and ensuring they are not shut down or have their electricity cut off without necessity.
🔴 Providing safe and sufficient water
Providing clean drinking water in sufficient and regular quantities for all detainees throughout the day, and taking the necessary measures to cool it during heatwaves.
🔴 Immediate medical care
Enabling all sick detainees to receive medical examinations and the necessary treatment, providing urgent medical response for cases of heat stress and heatstroke, and allowing the entry of medicines, medical supplies, breathing devices, and oxygen without obstacles.
🔴 Urgent health-related releases
Releasing people with chronic illnesses, critical cases, elderly detainees, and detainees whose health condition is deteriorating, in accordance with the law.
🔴 Combating overcrowding
Reducing the number of detainees inside cells in a way that ensures the minimum personal space and ventilation, and limiting the conditions that lead to suffocation and the spread of diseases.
🔴 Providing hygiene and prevention supplies
Allowing the entry of personal hygiene tools and disinfectants, and providing a healthy environment to limit the spread of respiratory and skin diseases.
🔴 Ensuring access to outdoor exercise and presence in well-ventilated places
Enabling detainees to have sufficient and regular periods of exercise in suitable, well-ventilated areas, to lessen the effects of detention in closed cells.
🔴 Allowing family and doctor visits
Ensuring that family visits take place with dignity and enabling specialized doctors from outside prisons to examine critical cases and provide the necessary care.
🔴 Ensuring a response to emergency cases
Ensuring the immediate transfer of detainees to hospitals when needed, and not delaying first aid or treatment in critical cases.
🔴 Independent oversight of detention conditions
Allowing independent and effective inspection visits to assess ventilation conditions, healthcare, and detention conditions inside prisons and detention sites.
🔴 Ensuring detainees’ right to seek help and file complaints
Enabling detainees to report their health conditions and detention circumstances without being subjected to punishment, retaliation, or harassment.
🔴 Stopping cover-ups and procrastination, and holding officials accountable
Opening transparent, independent investigations into deaths occurring inside places of detention, and holding accountable those responsible for medical neglect or shortcomings that threaten detainees’ lives.
The campaign emphasizes that freedom must not be turned into an additional punishment, and that urgent preventive measures are not a privilege, but a legal and humanitarian duty. Moreover, the right to breathe and to live is not a luxury or a political demand, but a fundamental human right.
How can you support the campaign?
🔴 We call on everyone—journalists, human rights defenders, and local and international organizations—to stand in solidarity with the campaign and help amplify the voices of detainees by:
🔴 Participating in the campaign’s products and sharing its messages and human-rights content.
🔴 Engaging through social media platforms, including Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and others.
🔴 Expressing rejection of depriving detainees of fresh air and proper ventilation by sharing photos, posting videos, and organizing live broadcasts—while ensuring that no person is put at risk.
🔴 Using the campaign hashtag to help expand the scope of solidarity and peaceful pressure to provide treatment, care, and humane conditions for detainees before it is too late.
#IWantToBreathe
#AlShahabCenterForHumanRights