Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute is a regional legal entity dedicated to the advancement of sexual and bodily freedoms for marginalized communities across the Middle East and North Africa. We provide a platform for critical legal analysis, advocacy, and community-led research rooted in intersectionality.
We are looking for original essays, legal critiques, and narratives that serve as case studies to ground solid policy analysis and legal reform. We particularly encourage contributions from the Maghreb, the Levant, the Gulf, and conflict-affected areas to ensure a truly representative regional discourse.
What We Look For
We welcome pitches from researchers, legal professionals, activists, healthcare practitioners, and individuals with first-hand lived experience. We value the depth and quality of an argument over a specific word count; therefore, there is no word limit for submissions. Whether your analysis is a concise intervention or an exhaustive deep-dive, we prioritize clarity, rigor, and impact.
Core Themes
We invite pitches that investigate sexual and bodily freedoms through the following lenses:
- LGBTQ+ Rights & Legal Recognition: Analyzing laws governing legal gender recognition and the rights of gender and sexual minorities.
- Intersex and Transgender Rights: Analyzing the specific legal and social hurdles faced by intersex and trans populations, including the right to bodily integrity and self-determination.
- Gender-Affirming Healthcare: Examining the legal and medical dichotomy between “Sex Correction” (Tas-hih) and “Sex Change” (Taghyeer).
- Abortion Rights & Reproductive Autonomy: Legal and social analysis of reproductive rights as a fundamental component of bodily freedom.
- Legal Precedent & Judgment Analysis: Deep-dive critiques of groundbreaking legal judgments that set progressive or regressive precedents impacting sexual and bodily freedoms in regional courts.
- Criminalization & Justice: Examining the repercussions of laws that criminalize same-sex relations, “imitation,” sex work, or drug use.
- Media Discourse & Social Impact: Research into how media representations and public discussions of these themes influence social stigma, policy shifts, and communal safety.
- Anti-Rights Actors: Investigative research into the strategies of anti-rights movements and actors in the MENA region and their impact on the advancement of bodily autonomy.
- Sex Workers’ Challenges: Exploring the intersection of stigma, society, love, and bodily autonomy for sex workers.
- HIV Access & Treatment: Rights-based approaches to prevention and care for key populations, including sex workers and queer individuals.
- Women in Context: Analyzing the roles of women in conflict, women in political roles, and the specific challenges faced by queer and women refugees.
- Queer & Feminist Economics: Investigating how economic structures and policies impact the bodily freedoms of marginalized groups.
- Digital Bodily Rights: Exploring surveillance, digital privacy, and the targeting of marginalized communities in digital spaces.
Broadening the Scope:
We are open to any other themes you deem fitting with our mission and goals. If your proposal does not align directly with the themes listed above but addresses bodily and sexual freedoms in the MENA region, we encourage you to submit. If you are unsure, we invite you to take a tour of our website to explore our previous publications and see if your proposal aligns with our institutional direction.
Submission Requirements & Compensation
- Compensation: In recognition of the work involved, Cairo 52 awards a prize of $200 USD for each selected and published piece.
- Evidence-Based Writing: All essays must be supported by rigorous evidence. We welcome submissions based on empirical data collected by the author, original legal research, or detailed case studies.
- Originality: All submissions must represent original work that has not been published elsewhere.
- Citations: Please use a consistent academic citation style (such as APA, Chicago, or Harvard).
How to Pitch
To ensure a streamlined review process, we only accept pitches through our official submission form. Please do not send full manuscripts via email unless invited to do so by our editors.
Pitch Submission Template
When filling out the form, you will be asked to provide the following:
- Author Biography (100 words): A brief overview of your professional background or relevant lived experience.
- Abstract, Evidence, and Recommendations: An outline of your proposed essay, including the core argument and the specific legal or policy context it addresses. This section must also include:
- A detailed description of the evidence or empirical data (collected by the author or sourced) that your essay will rely on to support its claims.
- A summary of the policy-oriented solutions, legal recommendations, or tangible changes you intend to propose for stakeholders and governments.
- Thematic Alignment: Select which core theme (or “Other”) your piece fits into.
https://form.typeform.com/to/nW6mcXYL
For general inquiries regarding the publication process, contact our research team at research@cairo52.com.