Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute is a legal focused NGO, which focuses on the intersectionality of sexual and bodily freedoms with other human rights as stipulated in national and international law.
What is the history of the organisation? How and why was it formed?
Cairo 52 was founded in 2020 by group of legal experts, community leaders and activists who have been active in the field of sexual and bodily freedoms for years. It was founded to bring the voices of marginalised communities into the civil society field and to bypass the gatekeeping being done by some civil society actors who wish to keep the sex worker movement out of the human rights conversation.
Which countries and/or regions do you work in?
Egypt
What is the sex work context in your country/region?
Egypt was one of the few countries with a legalised sex work industry in the dawn of the 20th century. This allowed for a dynamic community to grow in the country up to the 50s when all sex working activities were outlawed.
All forms of practicing sex working are criminalised under law no 10/1961. The law refers to “Prostitution” to describe female sex work and uses the term “Debauchery” to refer to male sex work. The scope of criminalisation under the law includes aiding, inciting, seducing, and advertising of debauchery or prostitution, in addition to, owning a brothel, forced sex work, and habitual debauchery or prostitution. The law does not criminalise buying sex work, however, in cases of debauchery it can be used to arrest both sides.
Some articles in the Penal Code are also used to criminalise sex work, most notably article 175 which criminalises “distribution of any materials against public morals” and article 269bis which criminalises “inciting adultery and debauchery on public roads”. In 2018, Egypt introduced cybercrime law no 175/2018, which has been used to prosecute cybersex work under article 25 of the law which criminalises “undermining public morals, social traditions and family values on the internet”.
The Egyptian authorities have been portraying themselves as the protectors of morals and values of society and has worked on demonising sexual minorities for decades, that include sex workers, gay people and liberal women. It is common for the Egyptian authorities to scapegoat those groups during political turmoil to distract the public from their own policy shortcoming.
Furthermore, decades of criminalisation have led to huge stigma on sex workers and further marginalisation. Access to justice for sex workers is very limited as any incident they may face during their work is hard to report, out of fear of being arrested themselves due to their sexual activities.
Moreover, during COVID sex workers were hit hard, as a huge sector of sex workers rely on tourists coming in from the rich neighbouring gulf states.
What are the priority areas that your organisation works in?
Cairo 52 is a legal research institute, that focuses on issues of sexual and bodily freedoms in Egypt. The program works through an intersectional approach believing that all sexual and bodily freedoms should be protected equally, thus our programs and activities reflect that. Our programs (Legal Aid, Legal Research, Alternative Media and Documentation, and Archive) all have intersectional approaches between international law, national law, human rights, and feminist ideals, we work to provide services that are affected the communities we serve (LGBTQ+, Sex Workers, Womxn and Domestic Violence Survivors) based on their own needs.
Our staff members consist of legal experts and community members (sex workers and LGBTQ+) who are combining their expertise and lived experience to work on producing a new narrative in tackling different issues impacting sexual and bodily freedoms in Egypt. We aim to serve different community members often underrepresented, including sex workers, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people living with HIV.
The strategies we implement come from all this understanding we have and obtain through our communities to the problems; we believe that legal education is a must in a country like Egypt where most people do not know how the legal system works or what rights they have in this system. Our aim is to enable individuals legally through reproducing knowledge that is tailored to the needs of our communities and through empowering future and current legal advocates with the resources they need. We also implement the theory of change in our different programs, making sure our outcomes are realistic and based on the needs we already identified.
All of this shapes our priorities which is adaptive to our own community needs, from grassroots to UN advocacy such as Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Do you provide services to sex workers? What kind?
Grassroots services include
- Legal aid, representation and litigation on their behalf.
- Security workshops, on how to stay safe and avoid being arrested while on the job.
- STIs awareness services.
Do you do political work, or campaigns? What kind?
- Alternative media campaigns aiming to put sex working in a more positive light
- Maintain the history of sex working alive in Egypt by archiving
- Strategic litigation
- In the future, we hope to submit Egypt’s first sex workers’ rights UPR to the UN human rights council during Egypt’s next cycle of review.
How are sex workers meaningfully included in the organisation?
People who have experience with sex work (former or current) are the backbone of the organisation, as they count for the majority of staff, management and volunteers. Furthermore, we have direct members of the sex worker community as focal points to assist with need assessments and to provide direct community consultations to the programmes we undertake.
Tell us about a big event or challenge you have worked on recently. For example, a campaign, a big event you worked on, etc. How did it go? What were the challenges?
In 2020, we received a case of a transgender woman sex worker from Cyprus who has been arrested and convicted in Egypt for different charges. She was yet to receive legal gender recognition due to the outdated laws in Cyprus, and since Egypt does not acknowledge transgender identities, she had to spend her sentence in solitary confinement.
Egypt and Cyprus had signed an extradition agreement, which in theory would have allowed her to go back to Cyprus to spend the rest of her sentence. However, it was challenging to find and mobilise the actual text of the law, engage with other stakeholders to mobilise the agreement in her favour and to keep her safe in custody despite the conditions she was kept in.
We started an advocacy campaign on her behalf; firstly, engage with national laws in Cyprus in Egypt to analyse which laws we can use to send her back to Cyprus. Secondly, open a line of communication with different stakeholders including Egypt's public prosecution office; the Cypriot ministry of foreign affairs and justice; and partner NGOs. Finally, coordinate with national and international partner NGOs to conduct an online campaign on her behalf.
Those efforts resulted in activating an extradition agreement between the two countries, according to which she can be extradited back to Cyprus. As such, after almost a year of imprisonment in an inhuman condition, she was sent back home where she was reunited with her mother. You can read about it on our website.
What challenges does your organisation face in the future?
- Mainstreaming sex workers’ rights among other civil society stakeholders in Egypt.
- Operating in an ultra-conservative society and very hostile government, navigating among the security risks that comes with the job.
- Securing funds to maintain the operations of the organisation.
- Elimination of stigma.
Does the organisation have a message for the sex worker rights movement? What about for people outside of the movement?
The process to achieve total rights for sex workers is long, but we are building the basis for it together. Time after the resilience of the community has proven to be its strongest asset; our communities are our source of investment and source of power.
For people who are outside the movement, sex work is work should be more than just a slogan, it is time to integrate the sex worker community into the mainstream human rights agenda more and to listen to the community needs and to stop the stigma generating from those who are supposed to be allies.