Structure and Content

Accessing Source Material

Adapting The Reader to Specific Course Needs

Technical Advice

Acknowledgments

Reader Feedback

Editors

 

About the Reader

February 2015

The Refugee Law Reader: Cases, Documents and Materials (7th edition) is a comprehensive on-line model curriculum for the study of the complex and rapidly evolving field of international refugee law. We are proud to continue with the expanded and universal edition of The Reader, which provides sections on international and regional frameworks of refugee law, covering Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Adapted language versions with specific regional focus in French, Russian and Spanish are also available.

The Reader is aimed for the use of professors, lawyers, advocates, and students across a wide range of national jurisdictions. It provides a flexible course structure that can be easily adapted to meet a range of training and resource needs. The Reader also offers access to the complete texts of up-to-date core legal materials, instruments, and academic commentary. In its entirety, The Refugee Law Reader is designed to provide a full curriculum for a 48-hour course in International Refugee Law and contains over 1500 documents and materials.

The Refugee Law Reader was initiated and is supported by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

 

Structure and content

The Reader is divided into six sections: Introduction to International Refugee Law, the International Framework for Refugee Protection, the African Framework for Refugee Protection, the American Framework for Refugee Protection, the Asian Framework for Refugee Protection, and the European Framework for Refugee Protection. Each section contains the relevant hard and soft law, the most important cases decided by national or international courts and tribunals, and a carefully selected set of academic commentaries.

To facilitate teaching and research and stimulate critical discussion, the Editors highlight the main legal and policy debates that address each topic, as well as the main points that may be drawn from the assigned reading. In many sections of the syllabus, readers may also access Editor’s Notes, which contain more detailed commentary and suggestions for teaching or analysis in a given subject area.

Because of the depth, scope, and flexibility of the Reader, it is now being accessed in multiple continents by over 100,000 users. The Reader’s availability in four languages and its expanded geographical coverage have made it an effective resource for regional approaches to refugee legal education. By overcoming language and territorial barriers, the Reader can also effectively serve a larger community of asylum experts worldwide.

The Reader first deals with the international refugee law regime and its foundations: the history of population movements and theories of migration, the evolution of the international refugee regime, the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and the expanding mandate of UNHCR and regional developments which have a bearing on the universal perception of the rights and duties of forced migrants. The 7th Edition also includes subsections dealing with internal displacement as well as statelessness; both topics that are closely connected to, yet legally distinct from, the international refugee law regime. The concepts and the processes are analysed in light of the formative hard and soft law documents and discussed in an up-to-date, high standard and detailed academic commentary. Issues underlying the global dilemmas of refugee law are tackled, taking into account developments in related areas of human rights and humanitarian law, as well as research advances in the field of migration.

In addition to the examination of the classic problematique of international refugee law, The Reader also presents the major regional frameworks for refugee protection. The African section of the 7th Edition provides an extended scope of legal instruments and other material pertaining to refugee protection in Africa and focuses on the central legal and policy challenges in their implementation, as well as on sub-regional legal frameworks and selected national laws relating to refugee protection. The American section considers the distinctive framework of refugee protection that has emerged in the Americas, presenting the regional instruments and jurisprudence alongside a thematic examination of internal displacement in Latin America that is explored in the context of a case study of Colombia. The Asian section presents the framework of protection on a continent where most States are not signatories to the 1951 Convention. It offers an overview of selected national refugee laws and policies on the continent and explores some of the broader protection challenges in the region. The European section presents the detailed pan-European asylum system constructed by the Council of Europe and the European Union, highlighting the Common European Asylum System that is increasingly creating regional norms and standards and is also looked to by policy makers around the world. The content of the 7th edition has been updated with materials that appeared up to October 2014.

While we have attempted to design The Reader so that users across jurisdictions, and with varying objectives, can select their own focus for the material, it is important that central themes of The Reader should not be discarded in this à la carte approach to refugee law. Thus, we emphasize that users should understand and apply the regional sections as adaptations and variations on the themes set forth in the universal materials found in Sections I and II.

 

Accessing source material

Most of the core documents and materials contained in The Reader are accessible in their full text format to all users. Core readings can be downloaded from The Reader website. As there are a large number of core readings that are accessible in The Reader, we recommend that the readings should only be selectively printed. Professors may wish to assign their students segments of the assigned readings, and many of the documents, and particularly lengthy legal instruments, can be effectively reviewed on-line. In addition, the Editors have included references to extended readings, which are not downloadable, for those who wish to study certain topics in more depth. In general, the extended readings are less central to an understanding of the topic, but on occasion copyright restrictions have required the Editors to categorize an important (new) reading as “extended”.

One of the significant advantages of an on-line Reader is that it is able to provide access to instruments, documents and cases in their entirety, offering a rich source of material for academic writing. It should be noted that for purposes of citation, however, the process of downloading articles in PDF format does not always translate the page numbers of the original publication. Hence, please consult the full citation that appears in the syllabus to ensure accuracy.

The Reader uses James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, 2nd Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam, The Refugee in International Law, 3rd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) as core texts. While it is likely that many university professors and students will have access to these revised editions of the two books in their libraries or university bookshops, the Editors are aware that many of our users may not. These users, however, will still benefit from open and full access to the text of the assigned readings from the 1st edition of Hathaway’s The Law of Refugee Status (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991) and from the 2nd edition of Goodwin-Gill’s The Refugee in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). In addition, it is possible to access the assigned readings from the 2nd edition of The Law of Refugee Status for those having been granted a password (see below for technical advice). Hence, the Editors have included parallel citations for the 3rd and 2nd editions of The Refugee in International Law, as well as for the 1st and 2nd editions of The Law of Refugee Status, to ensure that all can follow the core readings in the syllabus regardless of resources.

The Editorial Board and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee would like to thank Oxford University Press and its authors for their invaluable support for making refugee legal education accessible across the globe. We would also like to thank Cambridge University Press and other publishers of the literature included in The Reader, as well as all of the authors whose works we have selected. Because of their generous support we are able to provide password-protected access to these documents to professors teaching refugee law and legal clinics in regions of the world with a yet developing asylum system. More information can be obtained by contacting the Hungarian Helsinki Committee at the email listed at the bottom of the page.

 

Adapting the Reader to specific course needs

Editorial recommendations for how class time should be allocated to cover each of the respective subject areas, and their sub-topics, are provided below for a 48-hour course, as well as 24- and 12-hour modules. A copy of the complete syllabus can be downloaded and adapted for teaching purposes. Each of the sections of the complete syllabus, and their respective sub-topics can be directly accessed on the site. In the chart below, each of the major topics included in the syllabus are presented. The full text of the syllabus and the relevant source material for the assigned readings can be accessed in The Reader. For more detailed directions, see the section Technical Advice below.

Recommended hours for module teaching

Topic	48-hour course	24-hour course	12-hour course
Section I Introduction to International Refugee Law: Background and Context	8	4	2
Section II International Framework for Refugee Protection
Universal Principles and Concepts of  Refugee Protection	5	2	1
The 1951 Convention	14	8	4
Other Forms of International Protection	4	2	1
Section III–VI*	17	8	4
Regional Frameworks for Refugee Protection Section III African Framework for Refugee Protection Section IV American Framework for Refugee Protection Section V Asian Framework for Refugee Protection Section VI European Framework for Refugee Protection

*  The allocation of hours across the respective regions will vary according to the focus of the
    course.

 

Technical advice

The complete Syllabus of The Refugee Law Reader, available online and in printed booklets, provides useful general and detailed overviews of The Reader’s structure and contents.  To access a specific section of The Reader, click on the relevant section titles and subtitles in the left hand menu.

The vast majority of The Reader’s documents are freely downloadable. However, some documents require authorization (a password) and are limited to professors teaching refugee law and legal clinics in regions of the world with a yet developing asylum system, where up-to-date academic literature is not available due to the lack of resources. Requests for a password can be submitted via the website and are examined on an individual basis.

 

Acknowledgments

Each edition of The Reader expands upon the contributions of prior editors. This is particularly the case with members of the editorial board who were involved in the creation and development of the previous editions. We would like to thank above all Dr. Rosemary Byrne, Associate Professor of International Law and the Director of the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice, Trinity College, Dublin, who provided wide-ranging expertise and has been a source of great inspiration to all of us as the Editor-in-Chief of The Reader’s first five editions. Her leadership was instrumental in creating the universalised on-line refugee law resource that exists today in four languages. After her departure as editor in chief The Reader switched to a rotation of the title, with each editor only taking one term. Maryellen Fullerton was Editor-in-Chief for the sixth edition.

We would also like to thank the following prior editors:

Dr. Ekuru Aukot, the Director of the Committee of Experts on the Review of the Constitution in Kenya; B.S. Chimni, Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Francois Crépeau, Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Professor in Public International Law at McGill University, Montreal, and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants; Jean-Claude Forget, retired UNHCR official; Lyra Jakuleviciene, Professor at Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania; Darina Mackova, International Human Rights Lawyer at ACUNS; Eugen Osmochescu, International Finance Corporation, Belgrade; Steve Peers, Professor of Law at the University of Essex; and Luis Peral, Senior Analyst at the Club of Madrid.

The Refugee Law Reader has developed through the dynamic participation of many experts in the field of asylum, both internationally and within the regional network of refugee law clinics. We would like to thank the following persons for their valued contributions to the creation of The Reader:

Ágnes Ambrus, Oldrich Andrysek, Deborah Anker, Frank Emmert, Lucia Fulmekova, Juris Gromovs, Anamaria Gutiu, Barbara Harrell-Bond, Romanita Iordache, Dajena Kumbaro, Sean Loughna, Gregor Noll, Imre Papp, Judit Tóth, Blagoy Vidin.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee would like to thank the following publishers for their kind cooperation in granting permissions:

The African, Amnesty International, Belfast School of Law, Berghahn Books, Boston College International & Comparative Law Review, Brookings Institution, Caledon Institute of Social Policy, Cambridge University Press, Centre for European Policy Studies, Chicago University Press, European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), Denver Journal of International Law & Policy, European Parliament, European Policy Centre, Fordham International Law Journal, Forced Migration Review, Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, Fundamental Rights Agency, Global Commission on International Migration, Hans Zell Publishers, Hart Publishing, Harvard Human Rights Journal, House of Lords, Human Rights Watch, Immigration and Law Practitioners' Association, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Irish Refugee Council, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Juta and Company Ltd., LexisNexis Canada Inc., Makerere University, Malawi Law Society, Manak Publications, McGill Law Journal, Meijers Committee, N.P. Engel Publisher, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration, Oxford University Press, Physicians for Human Rights, Refuge, Refugee Law Project, Refugee Watch, RSDWatch.org, Southwestern Journal of International Law, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Sweet and Maxwell, T.M.C. Asser Press, Texas International Law Journal, UNHCR Bureau for Europe, University of Michigan Law School, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, VUB Press Brussels, Wiley, Wolf Legal Publishers, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, Yale Journal of International Law, 

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee would like to thank the following staff members and affiliates who have generously contributed to the completion of the Reader:

Gábor Gyulai, Benedetta Mangialardo, Mona Mojtabavi, Ildikó Nemes and Freya Nicholls.

 

Reader feedback

One of the advantages of producing an on-line resource is the editorial capacity to update and review materials at more frequent intervals than published texts would allow. For this purpose, we encourage you to send the Editors any suggestions that you may have for improving The Reader.

We would also like to include current case law as it develops. If you are aware of important jurisprudence that is available in English, French, Russian or Spanish, we would be very appreciative if this could be brought to our attention.

Please send any correspondence to the editorial board at:

Hungarian Helsinki Committee

1074 Budapest, Dohány utca 20. II/9., Hungary

Tel./Fax: (+36 1) 321 4323, 321 4327, 321 4141

 

Editors

 

Editor in Chief

Jens Vedsted-Hansen

University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Jens Vedsted-Hansen earned his LL.M and LL.D. from Aarhus University where he is a Professor of Law. Having worked as a research scholar at the University of Aalborg, Faculty of Social Sciences, and as assistant and associate professor at the Aarhus University Law School, he became a research fellow at the Danish Centre for Human Rights in 1993. In 1997 he joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen as an associate professor. Since 1999 he has been a professor of human rights law at the Aarhus University Law School where he is presently head of the INTRAlaw research centre. His research interests include international, European and Danish human rights law, immigration and asylum law as well as administrative and constitutional law. Among his recent works are contributions to The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. A Commentary (2014), Research Handbook on International Law and Migration (2014), International Protection of Human Rights: A Textbook (2. Edition, 2012) and Den Europæiske Menneskerettighedskonvention med kommentarer (Danish ECHR Commentary, 3. Edition, 2011). He has participated in various international research projects as coordinator, commentator or panel member. He served as a member of the Danish Refugee Appeals Board from 1987 to 1994 and was appointed for a new term in 2013. Since 2009 he has been a member of the Board of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and since 2012 a member of the Management Board of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.

 

Editorial Board

Nuria Arenas Hidalgo

University of Huelva, Spain

Dr. Nuria Arenas-Hidalgo is Associate Professor with Tenure of International Public Law and International Relations at the University of Huelva (Spain). She holds a degree in Human Rights from the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France) and currently lectures at the University of Huelva in Public International Law, European Union Law and European Refugee Law. She also teaches in the Master in “Company Legal Advice”, LL.M in “Professional Legal Practice”, and in the Master in “Globalization, Multiculturalism and Social Exclusion: Development, Social Policies, Social Work and Migrations”. In addition, she imparts the course on “European Asylum Law” at the University of Granada and the course “Immigration and Asylum from the Public International Law perspective”, University Pontificia Comillas of Madrid. Dr. Arenas wrote her doctoral thesis on the Temporary Protection Directive in the event of mass influx of displaced persons, and since then has published articles on International Refugee Law and the Common European Asylum System. She has been Visiting Professor at numerous foreign institutions, such as the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales (France), the Faculty of Economy, University of Coimbra (Portugal), the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany), the Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University (USA), the Centre for Migration Law, Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), and the Inter-American Court in Human Rights in San José de Costa Rica (Costa Rica). Dr. Arenas is also sits on the board of directors of the Centre for Research on Migration of the University of Huelva (CIM).

 

Alice Edwards

UNHCR Geneva, Switzerland

Dr Alice Edwards is the Senior Legal Coordinator and Chief of the Protection Policy and Legal Advice Section at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in Geneva. Managing a team of senior lawyers, in this position she provides strategic direction to the organization’s core legal and policy work and shapes key guidelines and policy positions on refugee and humanitarian matters. Her previous postings with UNHCR have been in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Morocco, and in Geneva, where in 2001-02, she was responsible for the ‘second track’ of UNHCR’s Global Consultations on International Protection. Dr Edwards has also held positions in Mozambique and in London (the latter with Amnesty International), and between 2006-10, held academic appointments in law at the universities of Oxford and Nottingham. She has published widely including her book, Violence Against Women Under International Human Rights Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011, paperback 2013), and co-editor of Human Security And Non-Citizens (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Nationality And Statelessness Under International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014). She holds a PhD from the Australian National University, studying under a full Australian Postgraduate Award, an LL.M in Public International Law awarded with Distinction from the University of Nottingham, and a LL.B (Honours) and a B.A in Political Science from the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria and the High Court of Australia. Currently, she enjoys the privileges of being a Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre and Research Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and Fellow of the Nottingham’s Human Rights Law Centre. She is on the editorial boards of Migration Studies and Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies. She participates as editor in the Refugee Law Reader in her personal capacity, and the views expressed or implied in The Reader do not necessarily represent the position of the United Nations or UNHCR.

 

Maryellen Fullerton

Brooklyn Law School, New York, USA

Maryellen Fullerton is Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, New York, USA. Her areas of expertise include asylum, immigration, and refugee law, with research focusing, in particular, on international and comparative refugee law. Her world view and teaching methods have been shaped by her academic commitments, first as a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium and Germany, later as a German Marshall Fund Fellow in Hungary, as a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Spain, and most recently as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento, Italy. Among her recent works are her co-authored books, The Global Reach of European Refugee Law (2013), Forced Migration: Law and Policy (2nd edn. 2013), and Immigration and Citizenship Law: Process and Policy (7th edn. 2012). In addition to her academic research and scholarly publications, she served as a rapporteur for Human Rights Watch/Helsinki on several human rights fact-finding missions to Germany. For her work with law students representing asylum seekers, she was awarded the Migration and Refugee Services’ Volunteer Service Award for Assistance to Refugees. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Duke University, pursued graduate studies in Psychology at the University of Chicago, and then studied Law at Antioch School of Law, from which she received her J.D. degree. After her law studies she worked as a judicial clerk for Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and then served as a judicial clerk for Judge Francis L. Van Dusen, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

 

Madeline Garlick

Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Madeline Garlick (LL.M (Cantab), LL.B (Hons), B.A. (Hons) (Monash)) is a Guest Researcher and PhD candidate at the Centre for Migration Law at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She is also an International Migration Initiative (IMI) Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, leading a project on the future of asylum in the EU with Migration Policy Institute Europe. She was Head of the Policy and Legal Support Unit in the Bureau for Europe of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and responsible for UNHCR’s liaison to the EU institutions from 2004-2013. She served as a member of the Secretary-General’s Good Offices negotiating team on Cyprus, from 1999–2004. She worked from 1996-1999 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Persons and Refugees and for the Office of the High Representative. She has also worked for ‘Justice’, the British Chapter of the International Commission of Jurists, on asylum issues. She is qualified as a barrister and solicitor in Victoria, Australia.

 

Elspeth Guild

University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Elspeth Guild studied classics in Canada and Greece and law in London. She defended her thesis on European Community immigration law at the University of Nijmegen, where she now is the Jean Monnet Professor ad Personam of European Immigration Law at the Radboud University Nijmegen and at the Law Faculty, Queen Mary University of London. She is associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels and a partner in the immigration department at the London law firm, Kingsley Napley. She also teaches at Sciences Po in Paris. She has published widely in the field of immigration and asylum law and policy in Europe. Her most recent monograph is Security and Migration in the 21st Century, Polity 2009. Professor Guild is the UK member of the Odysseus Network of academic experts in European Immigration and Asylum Law. She is frequently invited to advise both the European Commission and the Council of Europe on immigration and asylum issues.

 

Fatima Khan

University of Cape Town, South Africa

Fatima Khan is the Director of the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town, Law Faculty, where she lectures, supervises and conducts research. Her areas of expertise include refugee law and human rights, with her research focussing, in particular, on the local integration of refugees in an urban setting. Among her recent works are her co-authored book Refugee Law in South Africa (2014). Her teaching is informed by her extensive experience in the practice of refugee law at the Refugee Rights Clinic at the University of Cape Town where she is the principle Attorney. Fatima is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and the Refugee Clinic under her leadership has initiated several precedent setting cases in South Africa. The Refugee Clinic is an implementing partner of the UNHCR, which has consistently funded the Unit since 1998. Fatima earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Cape Town and after engaging in high school teaching for a number of years Fatima returned to UCT to complete an LLB and LLM, and she has been there since 2004.

 

Hélène Lambert

University of Westminster, London, UK

Hélène Lambert (PhD, Exeter; Maitrise de Droit Public, Strasbourg) is Professor of International Law at the University of Westminster, London. Previously, she has held lectureships at Bristol (UWE), Exeter and Brunel universities. She has also held a visiting fellowship at the Refugee Studies Centre (University of Oxford) in 1999, and Melbourne Law School in 2015. Hélène has been a regular consultant for the Council of Europe, UNHCR, and the Swedish Ministry of Justice; she also served briefly as a Protection Officer for UNHCR (1996). Hélène has published numerous books and articles on refugee law and human rights, including Seeking Asylum (Martinus Nijhoff 1995); The Limits of Transnational Law co-edited with G.S. Goodwin-Gill (Cambridge University Press 2010, now in paperback 2013); International Refugee Law (ed.) (Ashgate 2010); and The Global Reach of European Refugee Law co-edited with J. McAdam and M. Fullerton (Cambridge University Press 2013). She has also written a number of inter-disciplinary publications, including International Law and International Relations co-authored with D. Armstrong and T. Farrell (Cambridge University Press 2007, now in its second edition 2012). She is a member of the editorial board of the International Refugee Law Book Series (published by Martinus Nijhoff), a Senior Research Associate at the Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and a member of the Asia-Pacific Forced Migration Connection (APFMC). At Westminster Law School, she is Research Director for the Law School and Deputy Director for the LLM in International Law. She also teaches Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law, and currently supervises five PhD students in various areas of international law and EU law.

 

Juan Carlos Murillo González

UNHCR, Americas Bureau, Regional Legal Unit, San José, Costa Rica

Juan Carlos Murillo González, is currently the Senior Legal Officer and the Head of Regional Legal Unit of the Americas Bureau of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Prior to his appointment to this post in 2000, he joint UNHCR at the end of 1991 as Associate Protection Officer in Silopi, Turkey and has served as Protection Officer in Guatemala from 1992 to 1997 and then as Senior Regional Protection Officer in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1997 to 2000. He has written various articles on refugee protection in Latin America. He is an invited professor of the Inter-American Course on International Law, the Human Rights Master’s Degree of the University of Peace and of the Inter-American Course on Human Rights of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. He graduated from the University of Costa Rica as Lawyer and Notary Public. Before joining UNHCR, he practiced as a private lawyer and Notary Public in Costa Rica from 1987 to 1991. Juan Carlos Murillo González serves as an Editor in his personal capacity, and the views expressed or implied in The Reader do not necessarily represent the position of the United Nations or UNHCR.

 

Boldizsár Nagy

ELTE University and Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Boldizsár Nagy read law and philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he gained his PhD as well. He pursued international studies at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center. Besides the uninterrupted academic activity both at the Eötvös Loránd University (since 1977) and the Central European University (since 1992) he has been engaged both in governmental and non-governmental actions. He acted several times as expert for the Hungarian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Council of Europe and UNHCR and was counsel for Hungary in the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project case before the International Court of Justice. He was one of the founders of the European Society of International Law. He is member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Refugee Law and of the European Journal of Migration and Law. In 2004 Boldizsár Nagy joined the Odysseus academic network for legal studies on asylum and immigration in Europe. In recent years he has delivered lectures in Amsterdam, Beijing, Brussels, Cambridge, Geneva, Moscow, among others.

 

Sylvie Sarolea

University of Kent, Brussels, Belgium

Professor Sylvie Sarolea is Professor of International Immigration Law for the University of Kent, Brussels. She is also professor in Université catholique de Louvain, Université libre de Bruxelles, and in Central Africa (Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo) and teaches immigration law, private international law and human rights law. She holds an MA in Law from the Université catholique de Louvain (1994) and a PhD from the same university (2004). She is also lawyer, specialised in international law since 1994. Her main research interests are the relationship between the national sovereignty and the rights of the migrant and the harmonisation of EU asylum and migration law. She is the director of the EDEM centre (Equipe droits européens et migrations) in UCL since 2011. She is also expert for the Council of Europe and member of the Odysseus network.

 

Priyanca Mathur Velath

St. Joseph's College, Bangalore, India

Dr Priyanca Mathur Velath is currently Assistant Professor at the Masters Department of Political Science and Graduate Research Centre, St. Joseph's College, Bangalore, India. She has also been Faculty at the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, having completed her doctoral research on the ‘Rights of Development-Induced Displaced Persons in India’ at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. With an M.Sc from the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, U.K. and M.A & M.Phil from the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi, she has been researching, writing and publishing on the policies and politics of refugee studies, forced migration and the state-citizen rights framework for many years now. Velath has previously assisted Prof. B.S. Chimni in preparing the first Asia Syllabus of the Refugee Law Reader and has co-authored a study of the ‘Impact of Indian Nationality Laws on Statelessness’ for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, New Delhi. She has been member and office-bearer of the Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) since its inception; member and office-bearer of the International Association of the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) having served as Chair of the Program Committee for IASFM14 that took place in Kolkata, India in January 2013; and also on the Editorial Board of Refugee Watch Online (RWO).

 

Special Contributing Editors

Carolina de Abreu Batista Claro

University of São Paulo, Brazil

Carolina de Abreu Batista Claro is a PhD Candidate in International Law at the University of São Paulo Law School with a Master’s degree in Sustainable Development from the University of Brasília. She has been teaching international law since 2006 (the Euro-American University, Brazil, 2006-2010, Clio prep course for the Brazilian Diplomatic career, Brazil, 2007-2010, the Brazilian Institute of Law, Brazil, since 2014, among others) and is a pro bono lawyer for undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons in Brazil. She has worked as a Consultant on Migration Laws and Policies, particularly on environment-induced migration, to international organizations such as the IOM, UNDP and ICMPD and the Brazilian Ministry of Justice. Mrs. Claro served as an Assistant at the UN International Law Commission in 2014 and is currently an assistant researcher to a few members of the ILC. She is a member of the Studies Group on Environmentally Displaced Persons (NEPDA) at the Paraíba State University, Brazil, the South American Network for Environmental Migrations (RESAMA) and a Climate Leader trained by the Climate Leadership Corps in 2014.

 

Justin De Jager

University of Cape Town, South Africa

Justin De Jager is the Senior Litigation Attorney at the University of Cape Town Refugee Law Clinic where he has been since 2007. He has worked extensively with refugees providing a direct legal service and has piloted cases in various judicial forums such as the Equality Court and the Labour Court to seek relief for his clients. Justin’s writing has been informed by his practice of the law and he has recently published in the Canadian Journal Refuge on his experiences in the Equality Court of South Africa. He has contributed toward the writing of the first textbook Refugee Law in South Africa. Justin earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Cape Town. He also completed an LLB and an LLM at UCT and is currently a PhD candidate. Justin has further published in the area of electronic evidence which is the focus of his PhD.

 

Tal Schreier

University of Cape Town, South Africa

Tal Schreier is the Senior Researcher at the Refugee Rights Unit of the Law faculty at the University of Cape Town. She lectures, supervises and researches in the area of refugee law with a specific focus on the OAU Refugee Convention and refugee and migrant children. She has recently published in the Canadian Journal Refuge on unaccompanied foreign children and has also authored the section on refugee children for the Shadow Country report on South Africa discussed at the African Union in April 2014. Tal Schreier co-authored the book Refugee Law in South Africa. She holds a BA from York University, an LLB and JD from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, and an LLM from University of Cape Town.

 

Laura van Waas

Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, Tilburg, the Netherlands

Laura van Waas is a co-founder of Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and one of its two Directors. She is also a part-time Assistant Professor in the Department of European and International Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. She is one of few people to date who has conducted doctoral research on statelessness and her PhD manuscript, 'Nationality Matters' (published by Intersentia in 2008), is widely used as a reference for understanding international statelessness law by researchers and practitioners all over the world. In more than a decade of working on the issue of statelessness, Laura has carried out a wide array of research and teaching projects, both within academia and for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other actors. She has worked as a consultant for UNHCR's headquarters in Geneva as well as the regional offices for the Middle East and North Africa in Beirut and for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. She has supervised or conducted studies on statelessness for, among others, Plan International, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Open Society Foundations, the Women's Refugee Commission, the United States Department of State, the European Parliament and the Norwegian Refugee Council. Laura is also one of the co-founders and an active member of the European Network on Statelessness.