For the founding meeting of the MENA Prison Forum, psychologists, lawyers, human rights activists, filmmakers, academics, and journalists were brought together from across the region, alongside German governmental and civil society actors, to use their diverse backgrounds and varying fields of thematic expertise to form the operational foundation from which the project would evolve.

Starting with the notion of prison as central to the MENA region's political culture, identity, and mindset, a short- and long-term trajectory for the project was charted through which a variety of mediums and tools would be used to explore micro and macro level themes with the overarching goal of bringing reform to the carceral sector, difficult as that might be to quantify.