Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Goldie on 25 January 2023 (HL4903), what progress they have made towards (1) identifying and marking the graves of Egyptians who died serving the UK during the First World War, including in the Egyptian Labour Corps, and (2) recovering the records of all Egyptians who served with UK forces.

In its work to identify and mark the graves of the Egyptian Labour Corps and Camel Transport Corps, the Commonwealth War Graves Committee (CWGC) has established that more than 327,000 Egyptians served alongside Commonwealth forces across the Middle East, Turkey, and Western Europe. Of those, the CWGC now know that more than 16,500 died in service. Fewer than 400, however, have been commemorated by name, with the remainder commemorated collectively on the CWGC’s Giza Memorial.

The CWGC has determined that during the Second World War, the Ministry of Interior sent thousands of notifications of death to the fallen personnel's next of kin. The CWGC believes these records are likely to be held either by the Egyptian State archives or possibly by one or more departments of the Government of Egypt. Although this is yet to be confirmed, the CWGC have approached the Egyptian authorities and are working to gain access the relevant archives.

The CWGC's wider historical research in archives across Africa and Europe continues to make positive progress in revealing the names of those previously not commemorated, and in mapping potential burial sites. To date, almost 7,000 names have been recovered and the CWGC are actively working to commemorate these individuals in a manner befitting their service and loss.