Organization: American University in Cairo
Registration deadline: 23 Jun 2017
Starting date: 16 Jul 2017
Ending date: 20 Jul 2017
Advanced Refugee Law: Developing Strategies of Legal Engagement At The Frontier Of The International Refugee Regime(July 16 20, 2017)
Is someone a refugee if he or she has fled to a state that hasn't signed the Refugee Convention or recognized refugees in its domestic law? If this person isn't a refugee, does he or she have any rights? What protection is owed to him or her by the new state of residence? How can the law, lawyers and legal institutions respond to the vulnerability, needs and capacities of such individuals?
From Lebanon through to Malaysia, a majority of the world's refugees live in a broad, contiguous swath of states that have not signed up to the core international agreements concerning how refugees should be protected. Furthermore, many states that are party to the Refugee Convention have not incorporated its obligations into domestic law. In such locations, refugees are often treated as "outside of the law" and subject to discrimination, abuse and other serious human rights violations. The answers to the opening questions for these people are too often in the negative and the result can be catastrophic for refugees. Refugees in these locations suffer a range of mistreatment as result of being seen as outside of the law, including irregular status, discriminatory treatment from landlords and employers, sexual harassment and assault with impunity (including at the hands of state officials), arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention (often in conditions so severe as to put their life at risk), and corporal punishments such as canning. This course seeks to systematically explore some recent successes by local providers of legal aid to refugees at the frontier of the international refugee regime and to discuss how these successes can form the basis for a new approach to refugee protection.
At its outset, the course will explore the limitationsof the Refugee Convention and the international refugee regime that is built upon it. It will propose and develop an alternative approach based upon a broadly and diversely sourced “law of asylum”. The doctrinal sources relevant to this law will be elaborated, including international and regional human rights sources as well as domestic constitutional, statutory and customary sources, as will the practical challenges of such lawyering.Turning its critique of the international refugee regime upon itself, the course will also explore how more expansive understandings of what constitutes “law” may also reveal avenues and fora for advocacy. The course will also problematize the voice and agency of refugees in legal engagement and the meaning of and challenges facing those seeking to pursue legal empowerment. The course will draw heavily upon case studies sourced from jurisdictions traditionally seen as at the frontier of the international refugee regime, including mainly Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
The course will be delivered through a range of means including lectures, small group work, and interactive exercises. Invited speakers drawn from the local legal and refugee communities will also apply the discussions of the course to the context of refugee protection in Egypt. The course assumes a familiarity with the Refugee Convention and the international refugee regime and is aimed at post-graduate students, practitioners, policy makers and lawyers with an interest in the role of the law in refugee protection.
About the instructor: Martin Jones is a senior lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. He has practiced as a refugee lawyer in Canada and has published widely on various topics in refugee law. Martin is the co-founder of the Egyptian Foundation for Refugee Rights, the leading provider of refugee legal aid in Egypt, and has consulted widely to legal aid organizations in the Middle East and Asia. He is the principal investigator of a multi-year collaborative international research project investigating the role of the law in refugee protection in the Global South.
How to register:
Application Information:
To apply for the courses:
- Fill out the application form. The form is available on CMRS website: http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/outreach/Pages/ShortCourses.aspx
- Send the application form to cmrscourses@aucegypt.edu with your most recent C.V; Att. Naseem Hashim
Applicants may apply to and be accepted in more than one course. Please do not hesitate to contact cmrscourses@aucegypt.edu if you have any difficulty with the application process.
Applicants accepted for the course will be notified by email within a week after the deadline for submitting the application.
Eligibility for all courses
Requirements: These courses are offered for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers as well as practitioners working with migrants and refugees. A minimum knowledge of displacement and migration terminologies and context is a requirement for participation in any of the three courses.
All courses are conducted in English and no translation facilities are provided. Participants should have a very good command of the English language. Each course will run from 9.30 am till 4pm for five days.
Interested applicants can apply for one course or for all courses.
Number of Participants: minimum of 12 in each course
NB:Non- Egyptian applicants are strongly encouraged to apply early because it takes more than one month to obtain Egyptian visa.
Dates and Location:
Courses will take place at the AUC premises. The exact location and room numbers will be forwarded to accepted participants before the start of the courses.