Press Release – Berlin and London, 18 December 2024
 
High in the remote mountains of the Sinai where legend has it God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the St. Katherine Monastery Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is undergoing major and devastating change as Egypt rolls out a tourism megaproject dubbed the Great Transfiguration Project. State-influenced media report that this strategic plan of national importance, said to have the backing of Egypt’s President Abdelfattah El Sisi. is aiming to transform St. Katherine into a new hub of religious, environmental and health tourism, in greatest conceivable contrast to what this area is all about: serenity, solitude, and spirituality.
 
The megaproject was unveiled in 2021 with construction starting soon afterwards, often proceeding to a 24/7 schedule. Major transformation is now visible in the heartlands of the UNESCO World Heritage Site around the Monastery of St. Katherine, one of the oldest continuously operating Christian monasteries in the world. Plazas, villas, shopping bazaars, high-end hotels and other infrastructure now stand partially complete, sprawled over a landscape of invaluable historic and spiritual significance for Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike. New construction work is scheduled to begin in other areas of the site soon.
 
Natural landscapes have been extensively damaged, and indigenous rights violated. The Jebeleya Bedouins of St. Katherine have lost important parts of their ancient tribal territory. Houses have been demolished. Sites of special cultural sensitivity such as a tribal cemetery have been destroyed. A new urban world is being built around a people of nomadic heritage.
 
Egypt’s government has ignored multiple recommendations made in a UN Habitat-commissioned environmental review. It is acting in clear defiance of environmental laws relating to the nation’s natural protectorates and communities within them, as well as in violation of its obligations under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, most recently a 2023 notice to urgently halt construction in St. Katherine – all with a purpose to create facts before the international community will take notice.
 
Private corporations such as the Steigenberger hotel chain are reported to have acquired large parts of this sacred landscape for their operations, and major tourism companies are being approached to promote St. Katherine as one of their major new destinations.
 
While Egyptian media are promoting a positive narrative of the construction, framing it as ‘Egypt’s Gift to the World’, human rights abuses have been committed in implementing the megaproject. Egypt has used its state security forces to intimidate voices of opposition in the local community into silence. The outflow of information about the megaproject has been severely restricted, limiting global awareness of the situation. Few people have spoken out from St. Katherine, most of them anonymously or with a pseudonym. Five media articles have been published outside Egypt’s state-influenced media, with at least one journalist withholding their name out of concerns of repercussions.
 
A group of activists in cooperation with World Heritage Watch is now coordinating an urgent campaign to raise a wider awareness of the ongoing destruction of a landscape of outstanding universal value, demanding that