RSC Workshop: Refuge from Syria

The Syrian Humanitarian Disaster: Understanding Perceptions, Aspirations and Behaviour in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

Wednesday, 09 December 2015
The Garden Room, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB
Hosted by Refugee Studies Centre

This one-day workshop will be held on 9 December 2015 to engage researchers and practitioners with findings from recent research into the perceptions, aspirations and behaviour of refugees from Syria, host community members, and practitioners in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Professor Dawn Chatty will present her British Academy funded research on this theme alongside a number of other researchers and practitioners with recent experience in this area. The workshop aims to promote greater understanding of the unique socio-historical context of the Syrian humanitarian disaster in each of the regional hosting countries by addressing specifically changing perceptions and aspirations. In addition the workshop hopes to present examples of good practice and lessons learned from practitioners in all countries bordering on Syria.

The speed with which Syria disintegrated into extreme violence and armed conflict shocked the world and left the humanitarian aid regime in turmoil as agencies struggled to respond to the growing displacement crisis on Syria’s borders. The mass displacement has now  reached Northern Mediterranean shores as well as Central European borders. It has left the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan in a quandary as to how to effectively provide protection for these people seeking refuge. None have granted the displaced refugee status; each has established temporary measures to deal with this crisis. In many cases the displaced and the host communities have not been consulted and thus tensions have quickly emerged among host communities, displaced Syrians and humanitarian policy-makers and practitioners. That tension, despair and hopelessness has seen thousands leave the region over the past year in search for survival in dignity. This workshop aims to explore the different perceptions and aspirations of Syria’s refugees, humanitarian assistance practitioners, and the host community. It also seeks to probe what social factors with the host community, will, when circumstances permit, positively contribute to the reshaping and re-integration of Syrian society post-conflict.

Provisional programme now available >>

If you are interested in attending and taking part, kindly contact Ariell Ahearn on ahearn.ariell@gmail.com

 

CPD Accredited Workshop: The Fear of Female Genital Mutilation as Grounds for Seeking Asylum

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Please note there are still limited places available to attend the forthcoming workshop “The fear of female genital mutilation/cutting as grounds for seeking asylum”  This workshop has been rescheduled to take place on Wednesday 11 November 2015.    This workshop is CPD accredited by the CPD Standards Office (www.cpdstandards.com) .. Participants are eligible to claim 6 CPD hours at intermediate level.

Register online: http://www.oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk/fgm/

If you are a member of the Young Legal Aid Lawyers association(YLAL) or you work for a legal aid NGO you may register for a discounted rate (£135): http://www.oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk/product/fgm-workshop-young-lawyers-association-discounted-fee/

The Charity ’28 Too Many’ will also be highlighting their work to eradicate FGM  see: http://28toomany.org/events/

The Fear of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as grounds for seeking asylum

Female Genital Mutilation is child abuse and torture. It is illegal in the UK, but the Home Office is consistently rejecting claims to refugee status made by women and girls who seek asylum because they fear they will be subjected to FGM if forced to return to their home countries.

This workshop will introduce participants to the types of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); the laws against FGM in the UK and international law; the countries from where you may expect to receive asylum seekers; the potential health risk that result from FGM; how the fear of FGM is grounds for claiming asylum, constitutes child abuse, and where the claimant is an adult, FGM amounts to torture, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Topics reviewed will teach participants about the practice of FGM and its potential physical and psychological consequences.  Participants will engage with UK case law on FGM; learn to improve interviewing techniques; to provide imp representation to clients by engaging specialized County of Origin Information (COI) expert statements; and to anticipate and counter arguments for rejecting asylum claims based on FGM/C that may be mounted by Home Office Presenting Officers (HOPO).

DATE: Wednesday 11 November 2015, 8.45 a.m – 5.30 p.m

VENUE: St Aldates Room,  Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates, Oxford, OX1 1BX

REGISTER:  www.oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk/product/fgmc-workshop/

Registration deadline: 30 September, 2015– please note the deadline is extended as there are still some spaces available.

Fee: £200. The fee includes tuition, workshop materials, lunch and refreshments.

This workshop is suitable for: legal professionals, researchers, staff of NGOs, Government personnel and practitioners. (Knowledge of immigration law and/or FGM is assumed).

CONVENOR: Oxford Rights Workshops – Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Advisor.  Founder and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

TUTORS:

LAUREN BUTLER: For the past eighteen years Lauren Butler has worked in refugee organisations including the Amnesty International Refugee Office in San Francisco and the Centre for Women War Victims in Zagreb, Croatia. Having relocated permanently to the UK she is now a senior immigration caseworker at Rochdale Law Centre, having conduct of asylum applications and appeals and coordinating a programme providing specialised legal services to women and girls seeking protection in the UK. She has acted on behalf of women with FGM/C-related claims from the Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal.

BARBARA HARRELL-BOND: Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Emerata Professor, OBE, is a legal anthropologist who conducted research in West Africa from 1967-1982 while employed by the Departments of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh & University of Illinois-Urbana,USA, Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden, Holland, & the Faculty of Law, University of Warwick. She founded/directed the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (1982-96); conducted research in Kenya and Uganda (1997-2000), and was Adjunct Professor, American University in Cairo (2000-2008). She is now responsible for the information portal, www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org that promotes legal assistance for refugees around the world.

BRENDA KELLY: Dr Brenda Kelly is a consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, sub-specialising in maternal-foetal medicine. She is also the clinical lead for FGM in Oxford, and has research interests in Pre-eclampsia and its link to CV health. She is part of the FGM National Clinical Group, a charity committed to improving services for women with FGM through education and training of health care professionals

LIANNE POPE: Detective Sergeant, Protecting Vulnerable People Department, Thames Valley Police works closely with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to promote awareness of FGM in the Thames Value region.

For any queries please contact:  Heidi El-Megrisi

admin@oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk
www.oxfordrightsworkshops..co.uk
tel: + 44 (0) 7720601053

Events: RSC Workshop: Refuge from Syria, 9 December 2015

RSC Workshop: Refuge from Syria
The Syrian Humanitarian Disaster: Understanding Perceptions, Aspirations and Behaviour in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

Date: Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Location: The Garden Room, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB

This one-day workshop will be held on 9 December 2015 to engage researchers and practitioners with findings from recent research into the perceptions, aspirations and behaviour of refugees from Syria, host community members, and practitioners in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Professor Dawn Chatty will present her British Academy funded research on this theme alongside a number of other researchers and practitioners with recent experience in this area. The workshop aims to promote greater understanding of the unique socio-historical context of the Syrian humanitarian disaster in each of the regional hosting countries by addressing specifically changing perceptions and aspirations. In addition the workshop hopes to present examples of good practice and lessons learned from practitioners in all countries bordering on Syria.

The speed with which Syria disintegrated into extreme violence and armed conflict shocked the world and left the humanitarian aid regime in turmoil as agencies struggled to respond to the growing displacement crisis on Syria’s borders. The mass displacement has now  reached Northern Mediterranean shores as well as Central European borders. It has left the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan in a quandary as to how to effectively provide protection for these people seeking refuge. None have granted the displaced refugee status; each has established temporary measures to deal with this crisis. In many cases the displaced and the host communities have not been consulted and thus tensions have quickly emerged among host communities, displaced Syrians and humanitarian policy-makers and practitioners. That tension, despair and hopelessness has seen thousands leave the region over the past year in search for survival in dignity. This workshop aims to explore the different perceptions and aspirations of Syria’s refugees, humanitarian assistance practitioners, and the host community. It also seeks to probe what social factors with the host community, will, when circumstances permit, positively contribute to the reshaping and re-integration of Syrian society post-conflict.

A programme of the workshop speakers and timetable will be made available shortly. If you are interested in attending and taking part, kindly contact Dawn.Chatty@qeh.ox.ac.uk or Tamsin.Kelk@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Details online at: www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/rsc-workshop-refuge-from-syria

Course: Workshop on Refugee Testimonies and Advocacy, January 6-10, 2016 (Deadline Nov 1st)

Course: Workshop on Refugee Testimonies and Advocacy, January 6-10, 2016 (Deadline Nov 1st)

PROOF: Media for Social Justice is offering a workshop entitled, Witnessing: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy.

Co-facilitated by Dr. Anita Fabos, Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University and Leora Kahn, Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice, the workshop is geared towards professionals and academics who work with refugees and other displaced people.

Application

For more information about the workshop and conveners, and to apply, visit http://proof.org/witnessing. Applications are due by November 1st.

Eligibility This non-credit workshop is open to practitioners, researchers, and students in the field of refugees, displacement, and forced migration. The workshop will be limited to a maximum of 20 participants. The language of this workshop is English; we are unfortunately unable to offer translation services.Venue The workshop will be held at Center for Social Innovation in New York City

601 West 26th Street.

Fees Tuition for the workshop is US $975, which includes course material, lunch and coffee breaks. Pay by December 1st for the early-bird rate of $925.

Scholarships There are two available tuition-only scholarships for refugee participants.

Free workshop: Analysing migration flows using the IMAGE studio workshop

Workshop: Analysing migration flows using the IMAGE studio workshop

19 – 20 November 2015

School of Geography, University of Leeds

This international workshop aims to provide hands on training in the use of the IMAGE Studio.

The IMAGE Studio is a bespoke software system that has been developed for the analysis of internal migration data, focusing specifically on matrices of origin-destination migration flows. The Studio was created as part of the IMAGE project, an international collaborative research program funded by the Australian Research Council, which aimed to develop a robust framework for comparing internal migration between countries around the world.

Key features of Studio include:

• a suite of standard statistical indicators of internal migration capturing migration intensity, impact on the settlement system, distance and inter-regional connectivity
• a spatial interaction model that measures the friction of distance
• a facility to generate flexible geographies to address key methodological issues including the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP)

The IMAGE Studio has been used to make comparisons of internal migration in a large number of countries, and is now being made available as a new resource to the academic community worldwide. Possible applications include:

• computing robust measures of migration for individual countries, or groups of countries
• comparing migration among sub-populations (e.g. by age or ethnicity) within a country
• exploring the impacts of scale and zonation on migration measures (the MAUP)

This workshop will provide:

• An overview of the IMAGE project including the Inventory and Repository
• A systematic explanation of the structure of the Studio and its data requirements
• Advice on running the Studio and a guide to its options
• A review of UK Census origin-destination migration flow data available, its online access and its analysis using the Studio

Participants are encouraged to bring their own migration data to the workshop for use with the Studio.

The workshop is free to attend but places are limited so booking is required. Please book a place at http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=4173

Few places remaining: Supporting human rights organisations to deliver insights from data

Helping human rights organisations develop impact from their data: An ESRC & UK Data Service workshop

Colchester, 29-30 October 2015

Are you a professional working in a civil society organisation that collects administrative, monitoring or evaluation data in the human rights arena, and who oversees strategy, reporting and campaigns?

Are you interested in improving the way your organisation can translate data into knowledge?

If so, please join our workshop with peer organisations, at the University of Essex on 29-30 October and help shape ways of managing and sharing data ethically, analysing the data, and gaining insight to develop impact from these rich data resources to promote your work.

The workshop will provide a forum for participants to discuss the opportunities and barriers to gaining meaningful insights from human rights data – their own data, data from other organisations and the wider data landscape. Through engaging with case studies, participants will learn about what strategies, tools and skills are required for civil society organisations to become successful knowledge managers and report and campaign effectively with data-based evidence. We will examine the most useful models to build capacity from your data.

Our prestigious speakers include Neil Serougi (Trustee, Freedom from Torture), David Walker (the Guardian), Emma Prest (DataKind UK), Nigel Fielding (Surrey University), Matt Williams (COSMOS, Cardiff University), Tracy Gyateng (New Philanthropy Capital), Christina Rowley (ESRC’s Civil Society Engagement), and Louise Corti and Libby Bishop (UK Data Service, University of Essex).

Participants will help us develop case studies focused on ethics, governance for and the practicalities of sharing data, and gaining insight from data; develop a catalogue of available data sources, identify skills and training gaps and build a suite of exemplar datasets to build capacity.

Critically, this event will also help the ESRC to define its next phase of civil society engagement.

If you are working in a civil society organisation which collects human rights data, charged with overseeing strategy and campaigns; or are an academic, or work for a public sector body engaged in this area of work, please contact bookings@ukdataservice.ac.uk to register your interest. Spaces are limited and participants will be expected to prepare short cases studies from their organisations in advance to bring along. Limited travel and accommodation bursaries are available for staff in civil society organisations.

To find out more about this event, please visit the events page.

 

Event: Workshop: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy

Workshop: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy

January 6-10, 2016
New York City

http://proof.org/witnessing/

PROOF: Media for Social Justice is offering a workshop on refugee and forced migration narratives entitled, Witnessing: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy. Co-facilitated by Dr. Anita Fabos, Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University, and Leora Kahn, Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice, the workshop is geared towards professionals and academics who work with refugees and other displaced people.

 

For more information and to fill in an application, please visit http://proof.org/witnessing/

Event: One day workshop: The Fear of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) as grounds for seeking asylum

Oxford Rights Workshop: The Fear of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as grounds for seeking asylum

Female Genital Mutilation is child abuse and torture. It is illegal in the UK, but the Home Office is consistently rejecting claims to refugee status made by women and girls who seek asylum because they fear they will be subjected to FGM if forced to return to their home countries.

This workshop will introduce participants to the types of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); the laws against FGM in the UK and international law; the countries from where you may expect to receive asylum seekers; the potential health risk that result from FGM; how the fear of FGM is grounds for claiming asylum, constitutes child abuse, and where the claimant is an adult, FGM amounts to torture, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Topics reviewed will teach participants about the practice of FGM and its potential physical and psychological consequences. Participants will engage with UK case law on FGM; learn to improve interviewing techniques; to provide imp representation to clients by engaging specialized County of Origin Information (COI) expert statements; and to anticipate and counter arguments for rejecting asylum claims based on FGM/C that may be mounted by Home Office Presenting Officers (HOPO).

This workshop is suitable for: legal professionals, researchers, staff of NGOs, Government personnel and practitioners. (Knowledge of immigration law and/or FGM is assumed).

CONVENOR: Oxford Rights Workshops – Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Advisor. Founder and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

TUTORS:

LIANNE POPE: Detective Sergeant, Protecting Vulnerable People Department, Thames Valley Police works closely with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to promote awareness of FGM in the Thames Value region.

LAUREN BUTLER: For the past eighteen years Lauren Butler has worked in refugee organisations including the Amnesty International Refugee Office in San Francisco and the Centre for Women War Victims in Zagreb, Croatia. Having relocated permanently to the UK she is now a senior immigration caseworker at Rochdale Law Centre, having conduct of asylum applications and appeals and coordinating a programme providing specialised legal services to women and girls seeking protection in the UK. She has acted on behalf of women with FGM/C-related claims from the Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal.

BARBARA HARRELL-BOND: Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Emerata Professor, OBE, is a legal anthropologist who conducted research in West Africa from 1967-1982 while employed by the Departments of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh & University of Illinois-Urbana,USA, Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden, Holland, & the Faculty of Law, University of Warwick. She founded/directed the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (1982-96); conducted research in Kenya and Uganda (1997-2000), and was Adjunct Professor, American University in Cairo (2000-2008). She is now responsible for the information portal, www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org<http://www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org/> that promotes legal assistance for refugees around the world.

SAJIDA ISMAIL: Sajida Ismail is currently an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) where she teaches Law & Society, Public Law and the Law of the European Union, each subject encompassing aspects of Human Rights law. Sajida is also a solicitor (non-practicing). Prior to teaching at MMU she worked at South Manchester Law Centre as an immigration lawyer from June 2001 until September 2014 when the Centre closed down due to legal aid cuts. Whilst at the Law Centre she was seconded to a trans-national action research project (the WASP Project) in partnership with MMU on domestic violence and refugee law and co-authored the project report. She has also contributed to a Gender and Forced Migration working group at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as well as contributing the collection, Gender and Migration: Feminists Interventions , Palmary, I. et al. (eds), 2010, Zed Books. Ms Ismail has also undertaken voluntary work with the Medico-Legal Report Service (MLRS) at Freedom from Torture.

BRENDA KELLY: Dr Brenda Kelly is a consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, sub-specialising in maternal-foetal medicine. She is also the clinical lead for FGM in Oxford, and has research interests in Pre-eclampsia and its link to CV health. She is part of the FGM National Clinical Group, a charity committed to improving services for women with FGM through education and training of health care professionals

For any queries please contact: Heidi El-Megrisi
admin@oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk

Workshop: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy

Workshop: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy

January 6-10, 2016
New York City

http://proof.org/witnessing/

PROOF: Media for Social Justice is offering a workshop on refugee and forced migration narratives entitled, Witnessing: Working with Testimonies for Refugee Advocacy. Co-facilitated by Dr. Anita Fabos, Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University, and Leora Kahn, Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice, the workshop is geared towards professionals and academics who work with refugees and other displaced people.

For more information and to fill in an application, please visit http://proof.org/witnessing/

Workshop Event: Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion? A Workshop on the Preservation of and Access to Refugee Archives on Monday 13 July, 2015

Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion?
A Workshop on the Preservation of and Access to Refugee Archives

Monday 13^th July, 1:30pm to 6:00pm

 Registration from: 1pm

Room SD.1.04, Docklands Campus, University of East London

The event is free but please reserve a place at:
http://democraticaccess.eventbrite.co.uk

The University of East London’s Library at Docklands has been the home of the Refugee Council Archive for over a decade. According to the Archives Hub database, there are several other archives documenting refugee lives which co-exist in London and beyond. Questions arise as to who accesses these archives? Are refugee archives well-represented in relation to the preservation of lived experience of refugees and migrants? If not, why is this? Who get excluded from refugee-archives, and in what ways? How could we improve access to refugee research archives?

This half-day workshop led symposium seeks to find answers to the above questions. It is a launch event of an outreach project, “Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion: Civic Engagement through the Preservation of and Access to Refugee Archives”. In February 2015, under the auspices of the UEL Library and Learning Service, a bid was submitted by the Refugee Research Archives at UEL and the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging, focusing on the preservation of refugees and migrants lives through engaging with local refugee communities.

Awarded with an internal fund from the University of East London, we sought to use existing Archives held within the UEL Library as a basis to forge new partnerships between communities, students, academics, archivists and practitioners within the field of refugee and migration studies. At this end of project workshop we wish to share our findings with you which can help to generate a discussion on how to make archives as accessible, inclusive, representative and democratic. We will showcase the oral history of local communities and refugees made accessible through the new website of Living Refugee Archive.

All welcome. The event is free but registration is required for catering and space purposes.

Please register before end of June. Join us to discuss what can be done to improve access to refugee archives.
Programme

13:00             Registration, tea and coffee

13:30              Welcome by Thomas Shaw (Head of Collections and Digital Library,
University of East London)

13:35              Opening Remarks by Professor Allaine Cerwonka (Dean of the
School of Social Sciences, University of East London)

13:45            Who is the archive for? Knowledge, power and the (re)production of
legacies of community, oppression and struggle, Dr Tom Vickers
(University of Northumbria)

14:00            Archiving oral history: some possibilities for engaging with communities, Dr Toby Butler (Birkbeck and University of East London)

14:15            Listening to Lived Experience and Narratives of Refugees in London, Dr Rumana Hashem and Paul V Dudman (University of East London)

14:45            Making archives accessible and democratic: Breakout sessions

15:15            Tea and coffee break

15:30            Vice-Chancellor’s greetings – Developments relating to civic engagement within UEL, Professor John Joughin (University of East London)

15:45             Mapping the couplet of exclusion and access: A roundtable discussion and group feedback. Chair: Dr Georgie Wemyss (CMRB, UEL)

Discussants: Dr Ben Gidley (COMPAS, Oxford), Maurice Wren (Refugee Council), Paul V Dudman (Refugee Archives, UEL), Dr Rumana Hashem (CMRB, UEL), Sarah Menzies (Evelyn Oldfield Unit), Dr Toby Butler (Birkbeck and UEL), Dr Tom Vickers (Northumbria University).

17:00              A tour to the UEL’s Archives over drink and snacks reception

Hosted by the Refugee Archives and Library and Learning Services of University of East London.

Any questions or feedback, please contact the Archivist Paul Dudman, on 020 8223 7676 or p.v.dudman@uel.ac.uk

 

 

 

CMRB Event Today: Challenges in conducting research with Roma women offenders in prison Can Yildiz

No need to reserve a plce – just turn up at 4 pm today. Best, Nira Y-D

CMRB (The Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging)

at the University of East London is pleased to announce as part of its

Borders and Bordering Seminar Series:

Challenges in conducting research with Roma women offenders in prison
Can Yildiz
(King’s College London)

This seminar will take place in

EB.G.06, Docklands Campus, University of East London, E16 2RD,

nearest tube: Cyprus DLR

(http://www.uel.ac.uk/campuses/docklands/)

4-6pm, Monday 11^th May 2015

The event is free but spaces are limited so please reserve a place by following the below link

canyildiz.eventbrite.co.uk

Abstract: Can Yildiz’s doctoral study focuses on the experiences of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma women offenders as it aims to investigate the crucial social processes which produce extremely disproportionately high numbers of them in a London prison. She is about to start doing with her fieldwork in May 2015.  Drawing on her experiences obtaining ethical approval and to formulate her research framework, this paper will discuss some of the bureaucratic, theoretical and practical challenges in conducting research in this field.

Can Yildiz is a PhD student in Urban Geography at King’s College London. Her doctoral research is based on the experiences of Eastern European Roma women offenders in London. She holds MA on migration, mental health and social care. She is a qualified social worker.

See www.euborderscapes.eu for more information on the EU Borderscapes project, www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/borderscapes for details of the UEL Borderscapes team and www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb for information on CMRB

Event: Oxford Rights Workshops – Forthcoming Workshop on “Fear of FGM/C/C as grounds for seeking asylum”

Oxford Rights Workshops present the following workshop:

The Fear of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C/C) as grounds for seeking asylum

http://www.oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk/fgm/

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting is child abuse and torture. It is illegal in the UK, but the Home Office is consistently rejecting claims to refugee status made by women and girls who seek asylum because they fear they will be subjected to FGM/C if forced to return to their home countries.

This workshop will introduce participants to the types of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM/C); the laws against FGM/C in the UK and international law; the countries from where you may expect to receive asylum seekers; the potential health risk that result from FGM/C; how the fear of FGM/C is grounds for claiming asylum, constitutes child abuse, and where the claimant is an adult, FGM/C amounts to torture, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Topics reviewed will teach participants about the practice of FGM/C and its potential physical and psychological consequences. Participants will engage with UK case law on FGM/C; learn to improve interviewing techniques; to provide imp representation to clients by engaging specialized County of Origin Information (COI) expert statements; and to anticipate and counter arguments for rejecting asylum claims based on FGM/C that may be mounted by Home Office Presenting Officers (HOPO).

This workshop is intended to improve the skills of lawyers who represent clients seeking asylum on the grounds of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C/C).

DATE: Wednesday 22 July 2015, 8.45 a.m – 5.30 p.m

VENUE: Long Room, Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates, Oxford, OX1 1BX

REGISTER: www.oxfordrightsworkshops.co.uk/product/fgmc-workshop/

Fee: £350. The fee includes tuition, workshop materials, lunch and refreshments.

This workshop is suitable for: legal professionals and researchers
Oxford Rights Workshops offers unaccredited CPD points under the new continuing competency approach. This FMG Workshop offers 6 hours at intermediate level. (Knowledge of immigration law is assumed).

CONVENOR: Oxford Rights Workshops – Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Advisor. Founder and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.

TUTORS:

KATY BARROW-GRINT: Katy Barrow-Grint, Detective Chief Inspector, Protecting Vulnerable People Department, Thames Valley Police works closely with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to promote awareness of FGM in the Thames Value region and it the Thames Valley Police force FGM lead.

LAUREN BUTLER: For the past eighteen years Lauren Butler has worked in refugee organisations including the Amnesty International Refugee Office in San Francisco and the Centre for Women War Victims in Zagreb, Croatia. Having relocated permanently to the UK she is now a senior immigration caseworker at Rochdale Law Centre, having conduct of asylum applications and appeals and coordinating a programme providing specialised legal services to women and girls seeking protection in the UK. She has acted on behalf of women with FGM/C-related claims from the Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal.

BARBARA HARRELL-BOND: Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond, Emerata Professor, OBE, is a legal anthropologist who conducted research in West Africa from 1967-1982 while employed by the Departments of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh & University of Illinois-Urbana,USA, Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden, Holland, & the Faculty of Law, University of Warwick. She founded/directed the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (1982-96); conducted research in Kenya and Uganda (1997-2000), and was Adjunct Professor, American University in Cairo (2000-2008). She is now responsible for the information portal, www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org that promotes legal assistance for refugees around the world.

SAJIDA ISMAIL: Sajida Ismail is currently an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) where she teaches Law & Society, Public Law and the Law of the European Union, each subject encompassing aspects of Human Rights law. Sajida is also a solicitor (non-practicing). Prior to teaching at MMU she worked at South Manchester Law Centre as an immigration lawyer from June 2001 until September 2014 when the Centre closed down due to legal aid cuts. Whilst at the Law Centre she was seconded to a trans-national action research project (the WASP Project) in partnership with MMU on domestic violence and refugee law and co-authored the project report. She has also contributed to a Gender and Forced Migration working group at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg as well as contributing the collection, Gender and Migration: Feminists Interventions , Palmary, I. et al. (eds), 2010, Zed Books. Ms Ismail has also undertaken voluntary work with the Medico-Legal Report Service (MLRS) at Freedom from Torture.

BRENDA KELLY: Dr Brenda Kelly is a consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, sub-specialising in maternal-foetal medicine. She is also the clinical lead for FGM in Oxford, and has research interests in Pre-eclampsia and its link to CV health. She is part of the FGM National Clinical Group, a charity committed to improving services for women with FGM through education and training of health care professionals

Call for Papers – Workshop: “Representation of minorities: perspectives and challenges” University of York, 15 May 2015

Call for Papers:

Workshop: “Representation of minorities: perspectives and challenges”
University of York, 15 May 2015

***DEADLINE: 20 February***

The aim of this workshop is to discuss new approaches to the study of minority representation, especially turning the attention from who represents minorities to how minority representation takes place. While the question of how democracy can represent diversity (or fails to do so) is pressing both in academia and in public discourse, there has been so far little interchange between researchers who study this issue. The main goal of this workshop is to start a conversation among graduate students and early-career scholars working in the field of political representation both theoretically and empirically, in order to create a fruitful scholarly network and engender a wider, multifaceted debate and promote future collaborations.

We are interested both in contributions that deal theoretically with the meaning, content and goals of group representation and in contributions that analyse empirically the political representation of specific minorities (ethnic minorities, religious minorities, racial minorities, migrants). We are also interested in contributions that look at these issues from an intersectional perspective (including class and gender). From a theoretical perspective, we are particularly interested in papers that discuss a relationship between a claims-making approach to representation and normative issues of responsiveness. Some of the main empirical questions that will be discussed are: What is effective representation, and is it the same in all institutional and cultural settings? Are minority political empowerment, democratic stability, inter-ethnic conflict management, and policy responsiveness complementary goals? Can they be achieved through the same institutions and forms of representation? What is the potential of informal representation through minority councils or civil society?

The one-day workshop will be focused on debate, with a combination of short presentations, roundtables, open discussions and a keynote speech by Professor Michael Saward. Selected papers will have to be submitted by 20 April 2015. The papers will be circulated in advance among participants, in order to ensure high-quality feedback and discussion. Additional feedback on individual papers will be provided by the staff from the Department of Politics at the University of
York. Selected papers from the workshop will be submitted as a Special Issue in an academic journal.

This event is supported by the British International Studies Association Postgraduate Network (BISA PGN), and the Department of Politics and the Conflict, Security and Development research cluster at the University of York. A maximum of 10 grants will be awarded to participants to partially cover
travel and accommodation costs. However, we invite all participants to also apply for funding from their own institutions.

Paper proposals should be submitted by 20 February 2015 through this link:
http://form.jotformeu.com/form/50213182049345

Please do not hesitate to contact the organisers for any further information: Jelena Loncar
(jl1406@york.ac.uk), Licia Cianetti (l.cianetti@ucl.ac. uk, lcianetti@gmail.com)

Workshop: ‘Undesirable and Unreturnable’: the UK’s response to excluded asylum seekers and other migrants suspected of serious criminality

Workshop: ‘Undesirable and Unreturnable’: the UK’s response to excluded asylum seekers and other migrants suspected of serious criminality

Thursday 23^rd October, 16:30-18:30pm

Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House

Speakers: Dr Mariagiulia Giuffré, Edge Hill University, Jerome Phelps, Detention Action and Dr Sarah Singer, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study

Attendance is free. Register for a ticket here.

 

Abstract: The question of migrants suspected of serious criminality regularly generates storms of political controversy. Human rights law is pushed to its limits here, as governments grapple with the political and legal implications of unwanted (criminal) foreigners on their territory. Human rights protections and practical considerations mean that such individuals can often not be removed to their country of origin nor a third State. Faced with these unreturnable yet undesirable migrants, governments have in some cases nevertheless pursued removal on the basis of diplomatic assurances and other forms of agreement with third states. However, such assurances have been heavily criticised as ineffective in practice, and been subject to considerable judicial challenge. In the absence of impending removal from the host state, such individuals are left in an uncertain legal limbo, subject to various counter-terrorism measures, (indefinite) detention and precarious forms of leave. This workshop explores the UK’s response to unreturnable asylum seekers and other migrants suspected of serious criminality, and questions how far human rights law can survive in an area so far towards the edges of protection, where human rights are celebrated by so few and contested by many.

 

Speakers: Jerome Phelps has been working with people in immigration detention since 2003.  In that time he has led Detention Action’s transformation from a local service-delivering organisation, London Detainee Support Group, to taking on a national role in challenging immigration detention in the UK.  He is the lead author of Detention Action’s reports: Detained Lives: the real cost of indefinite immigration detention (2009), No Return No Release No Reason (2011) and The State of Detention (2014), and co-author of Fast Track to Despair (2012) and Point of No Return: the futile detention of unreturnable migrants (2014).  Jerome writes regularly on detention and migration issues, including for the New Internationalist, Huffington Post, Forced Migration Review and openDemocracy.  He is the Western Europe representative of the International Detention Coalition.

 

Dr Mariagiulia Giuffré joined the Department of Law and Criminology at Edge Hill University as a Lecturer in Law in October 2013. She received her PhD (with the Doctor Europaeus Certificate) from the School of International Studies of the University of Trento in May 2014. She holds an LLM in Human Rights Law from the Queen Mary University of London, and she has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Migration Law at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. She has served as an Intern at the Italian Consulate in London, and has both worked and volunteered for human rights NGOs. She is an Affiliate to the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI), School of Advanced Study, University of London, and a Member of the Lund/Uppsala Migration Law Network (L/UMIN). Thanks to a Scholarship awarded by the Swedish Institute, Mariagiulia has been a Visiting Researcher at the Faculty of Law, Lund University, where she has taught, since October 2010, on the LLM programs in Maritime Law and International Human Rights Law. Mariagiulia’s research interests are in International and European Law, Refugee Law and Policy, Human Rights and Migration Law. Her articles on refugees’ access to protection, migration by sea, readmission agreements, extraterritorial human rights obligations and diplomatic assurances have been published on the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the International Journal of Refugee Law, and the Refugee Survey Quarterly, among others.

 

Dr Sarah Singer is an academic at the Refugee Law Initiative and Lecturer in Human Rights Law at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Sarah is also Managing Editor of the International Community Law Review, a peer reviewed academic journal published by Brill; Martinus Nijhoff. She is Programme Director of the MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies (launching October 2014), the first postgraduate distance learning programme of its kind, run by the Refugee Law Initiative and delivered through the prestigious University of London International Programmes. She also teaches the law component of the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Sarah’s research interests are in refugee law and policy, human rights and migration. She specialises in and has a number of publications on the topic of exclusion from refugee status. Her current research addresses the challenges posed to national and international public policy by asylum seekers who are suspected of serious criminality but cannot be removed from the territory of the host State. Sarah previously worked as an immigration caseworker at the House of Commons and has received a number of awards for her research including the prestigious Modern Law Review Scholarship.

Events: Refugee Testimonies workshop (reminder)

Refugee Testimonies Workshop at Clark University
September 19-21, 2014

The International Development, Community and Environment Department at Clark University is offering a three-day workshop entitled, Witnessing: Taking testimonies and constructing refugee narratives. Taught by Leora Kahn, Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Change, the workshop is geared towards professionals who work with refugees and other displaced people.

Workshop Description:
Testimonies have different purposes. They can be used for refugee status determination (RSD), in journalistic accounts, for testimony in an international court, for policy research and academic articles, to teach, or to preserve history. Testimonies have also helped stimulate and shape social change, and can be an effective tool for policy change and social transformation.

This three-day, hands-on workshop will introduce methods and ethics of testimony-taking and will examine the uses and importance of refugee testimonies. Participants will learn to take testimonies and construct narratives through different techniques, and will become familiar with techniques of visual story-telling for advocacy and other purposes. The workshop will bring together refugee service professionals, community leaders, field practitioners in local and international agencies, representatives of government entities and academics in a collaborative environment. We will explore ethical questions in taking testimonies to illuminate human rights issues. During this workshop participants will actively practice taking testimonies based on the topics and methods discussed in each class. The workshop also includes a field trip to an oral history exhibit based on refugee testimony, and coincides with the opening of the exhibit, Picturing Moral Courage: The Rescuers at Clark University. Topics and examples will include: oral history projects with refugees from Bhutan, testimony from Syrian asylum seekers in Europe, and visual narratives from Guatemala, among others.

About the Workshop Convener:

Leora Kahn is the founder and Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice, an award-winning organization that brings together photographers, documentarians, academics and activists to create visual documentary projects that become sustainable educational tools in regions riven by recent armed conflict and atrocities. Leora was previously the director of photography at Workman Publishing and at Corbis. She has also worked for Time, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and US News and World Report as well as for the Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations. She has curated exhibitions for the Ford Foundation, ABC Television, Amnesty International, Women’s Refugee Commission, and the Holocaust Museum in Houston, and has held visiting appointments at the Genocide Studies Center at Yale University, where she conducted research on rescuers and rescuing behavior, and at Clark University’s Holocaust and Genocide Center.

Eligibility:
This non-credit workshop is open to practitioners, researchers, and students in the field of refugees, displacement, and forced migration. The workshop will be limited to a maximum of 20 participants. The language of this workshop is English; we are unfortunately unable to offer translation services.

Venue:
The workshop will be held in the beautiful Rose Library at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. Map: http://goo.gl/maps/usfe2

Fees:
Tuition for the workshop is US$550, which includes course material, lunch and coffee breaks on all three days, field trip to Boston, and the Picturing Moral Courage exhibit reception.

Scholarships:
There are two available tuition-only scholarships for participants from refugee backgrounds. Please contact the workshop administrator for an application form.

Application Process:
To apply for the workshop, please email a cover letter and a recent CV to workshop administrator Danielle Strandson dstrandson@clarku.edu by the deadline August 20,  2014

A deposit of $150 is due by August 31. Please note that the deposit is non-refundable.

More information on payment method will be provided to accepted participants. A list of recommended accommodations will be sent to all accepted participants.