A file photo of late Abdel-Ghafar Shukr (Photo : Ahram)
Shukr served as the vice-chairman of the NCHR from 2012 till October 2021.
Born in May 1936 in a Mounfiya village in Nile Delta, Shukr graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University in 1958.
A son of a village mayor who supported the liberal Wafd Party, Shukr started his political career and activism at the age of 17 when he joined the Liberation Organization in 1953, which was founded by the Free Officers after the 1952 Revolution to replace political parties.
In an interview with Ahram Online in 2012, Shukr said he believed that one of the major mistakes of the 1952 Revolution, which he supported overall, was the dissolution of the parties and ending the country's pre-1952 political pluralism.
In 1958, Shukr joined the National Union that was founded by late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser replacing the Liberation Organization.
In 1963, he joined the Socialist Union, which was also founded by Abdel-Nasser in 1962 as a unified organization that would lead Egypt’s political life till his death in 1970.
In 1964, Shukr was selected as the education secretary in the Socialist Youth Organization of the Socialist Union.
He was a member of the political bureau of the leftist Tagammu Party, which was founded in 1976 as the late president Anwar Sadat reinstated a multi-party political system.
Following the 2011 revolution, Shukr quit Tagammu to co-found and lead the Socialist Popular Alliance Party.
He served as the director of the Arab and African Studies Centre.
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