In November 2025, security standards in Egypt took a real step forward. All Care Group joined Lafarge Cement Egypt and the Embassy of Canada to Egypt in launching the ICoCA Egypt Chapter, the first national chapter the International Code of Conduct Association has ever established anywhere in the world.
A “chapter” for an international standards body can sound abstract. In practice, it solves a very concrete problem: helping clients tell the difference between security providers who genuinely meet international standards and those who just say they do.
Why Egypt Needed This
Egypt’s private security sector is large and fragmented. Every security company operating here has to be fully owned by Egyptian citizens and licensed by the Ministry of Interior, and there are hundreds of them competing for business. For a client trying to choose the right partner, whether that is a diplomatic mission, a multinational corporation, or a local facility manager, that volume makes it genuinely hard to separate serious operators from the rest.
Large corporations sometimes build and manage their own guard forces. Most organizations find it more practical to contract a private security company instead, which puts the burden of due diligence back on the client. For international companies and diplomatic missions in particular, ICoCA membership does a lot of that due diligence for them. It confirms a provider has been independently certified, usually to ISO 18788, and holds itself to standards on labor law, fair wages, and the ethical treatment of security personnel, not just on paper but as a condition of membership.
That distinction matters more in a tight economy, where procurement decisions can drift toward the lowest bid. That pressure tends to land on wages and training first. Recognizing ICoCA membership as a real signal, rather than just another line on a proposal, gives procurement teams a defensible reason to choose quality over the cheapest number on the page.
How the Chapter Came Together
The idea started at a conference in May 2025, hosted by Lafarge Cement Egypt and organized by Ahmed El Serafy, the company’s Director of Security and Resilience. ICoCA’s Chris Galvin presented to a room of corporate security managers and private security firms, and in the conversations that followed, our own president, Ahmed Manzour, raised a problem that a lot of people in the room recognized: almost nobody in Egypt, including foreign embassies and companies with ICoCA Observer status, actually knew what ICoCA was. Without that awareness, it was hard for local firms to justify the cost of membership, since the commercial upside wasn’t there yet.
That conversation is where the idea of an Egypt Chapter came from: build the awareness first, and the rest follows.
By October 2025, Tariq Gordon, the Counsellor responsible for security at the Embassy of Canada to Egypt, brought together the Australian and Swiss embassies, ABB, BP, the Holcim Group, Philip Morris, All Care Group, and Eagles to formalize it. Everyone in that room agreed to establish the Egypt Chapter.
The Launch
On November 17, 2025, the Embassy of Canada hosted the Chapter’s inaugural meeting, followed by a roundtable led by Canadian Ambassador Ulric Shannon with ICoCA’s Chris Galvin and Nada Bessassi. That session introduced ICoCA’s principles to the Egypt Corporate Security Network, walking through what accountability and ethics actually look like in day to day security operations, not just in a mission statement.
The evening moved into the Second Annual Diplomatic Security Reception, drawing a genuinely wide mix of guests: airlines, hotels, hospitals, international companies, embassies, and private security firms, alongside representatives from Egypt’s Ministry of Interior, the Egyptian Accreditation Council (EGAC), International Quality Services (IQS Egypt), and ICoCA delegates who traveled in from Geneva. All Care Group, Eagles, Elite, Forces Plus, Magnum, and Middle East Security all had booths on the floor, which made for a rare evening of security companies networking with each other instead of just competing.
What 2025 Delivered
A few developments from that year are worth calling out on their own.
The Egyptian Accreditation Council started accrediting certification bodies to ISO 18788, making Egypt only the fourth national accreditation body in the world to adopt that standard. That decision opens the door for more Egyptian companies to pursue ISO 18788 and ICoCA certification locally, rather than routing everything through certification bodies abroad.
All Care Security became the first Egyptian company to earn ISO 18788 certification, which is one of the core requirements for full ICoCA membership.
Middle East Security applied for ICoCA affiliation and was granted Affiliate status on December 1, 2025, with several other companies going through the same process now.
Why It Matters
“For years, the hardest part of this work wasn’t meeting the standard. It was explaining to people why the standard mattered,” said Ahmed Manzour, President of All Care Group. “Now there’s a room full of embassies, corporations, and security companies who understand exactly why it does.”
The Egypt Chapter is the first country chapter ICoCA has ever set up, and the association has already built out Terms of Reference so other countries can copy the model. For clients working with All Care Group, this is one more layer of proof behind what we tell you directly: our commitment to security, compliance, and trust isn’t limited to our own certifications. We helped build the structure that holds the whole sector accountable to the same standard.
If you are evaluating a security or risk management partner in Egypt, whether for a diplomatic mission, a corporate site, or a facility management contract, get in touch with All Care Group to talk through what working with an ICoCA member actually looks like in practice.