The American University in Cairo

THE FORCED MIGRATION AND REFUGEE STUDIES PROGRAM



Summer Short Courses 2005



- International Refugee and Human Rights Law

- Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Refugees

- Researching Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Identity: The Palestinian 

and Sahrawi Cases



International Refugee and Human Rights Law

5 - 9 June 2005

Course description:

This course will introduce participants to refugee and international human 

rights law, instructing them in the primary elements of the 1951 Geneva 

Convention as well as its interaction with the 1969 OAU Convention.  There 

will be particular attention to some of the more controversial aspects of the 

refugee definition, including the internal flight alternative or "relocation 

principle" as well as the application of the exclusion clauses with regard to 

war crimes and crimes against humanity. Participants will be taught how to do 

Country-of-Origin Research, and to develop legal arguments in defense of 

asylum seekers case on first instance and appeals. Case studies will be 

discussed in small groups and interviewing, research and advocacy skills will 

be practiced.



Instructor: Perveen Ali, JD, Program Director of Africa and Middle East 

Refugee Assistance – Egypt (AMERA)



Perveen Ali, JD, MSW, MA, completed her Juris Doctor at the University of 

Washington, where she specialized in international human rights and refugee 

law.  She is currently serving as the Program Director of Africa and Middle 

East Refugee Assistance-Egypt, a nongovernmental organization providing legal 

aid to asylum-seekers and refugees in Egypt.  She has over twelve years of 

professional, academic, and research experience in the field of refugee 

protection and women’s rights in the US, Eastern Europe, South Africa, and the 

Middle East.  She is the author of “The War on Terrorism: Testing the Legalist 

Limits of the Human Rights Regime”, an article published by the ACLU in 2004, 

written in collaboration with Professor Joan Fitzpatrick.  She has conducted 

comparative research on the use of safe havens to contain internally displaced 

persons in Iraqi Kurdistan, the former Yugoslavia, and Sri Lanka; the 

prospects for legal, social, and political integration of Palestinian refugees 

in Lebanon; the political economy of human trafficking and smuggling of women 

from the Philippines, and the use of rape in warfare in the former Yugoslavia 

and Vietnam.  



The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, 

Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.



See Below for application procedures.



Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Refugees

12 - 16 June 2005

Course description:

Understanding and meeting the psychosocial needs of refugees is essential to 

effective humanitarian intervention.  This course aims to help psychosocial 

workers to enhance their knowledge of refugee needs and increase their ability 

to meet them appropriately.  Topics will include cultural concepts of mental 

health and well being, basic interviewing and supportive counseling skills, 

working with translators, conceptualizing and treating refugee trauma, 

understanding and meeting children’s needs, managing stress and preventing 

burnout among humanitarian workers.  Participants will be assigned to 

psychosocial teams to analyze and solve practical and ethical dilemmas that 

arise in this line of work.  The course is limited to 30 participants.



Instructor: Dr. Nancy Peterson, State University of New York.



Dr. Nancy Peterson is a practicing clinical psychologist with a wealth of 

experience in psychosocial intervention and program development. She is 

presently the director of a psychological program for children with HIV at the 

Department of Pediatrics, Brooklyn Medical Center, State University of New 

York (SUNY).  Dr. Peterson was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the 

American University in Cairo, taught a required course for the FMRS diploma 

entitled, ‘Psychosocial Issues in Forced Migration’, and was an active member 

of the Joint Steering Committee of the FMRS program.  She first worked with 

internally displaced persons while conducting her dissertation research in 

Kampala, Uganda (1990-1993) and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from 

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in 1994.  From 1994-1998, 

Dr. Peterson directed a psychosocial program for children with life-

threatening illness, including some refugee families, in Washington, D.C.  

Together with Esther Dingemans, she completed a research study focused on the 

psychosocial needs of Sudanese refugee children living in Cairo.  Dr. Peterson 

has visited psychosocial intervention programs for refugees and internally 

displaced persons in Uganda, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Nepal, and India.  She has 

also conducted training sessions on meeting the psychosocial needs of refugees 

for professionals in Morocco and Azerbaijan.



The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, 

Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.



See Below for application procedures.



Researching Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Identity: The Palestinian 

and Sahrawi Cases.

19 – 23 June 2005

Course description:

The national struggles against occupation and colonialism are central to the 

Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee experiences, a dimension that is muted in 

humanitarian discourse. Based on a bottom-up approach, and drawing mainly, if 

not exclusively, on anthropological research in refugee camps, this 

interactive course aims at providing participants with a more nuanced 

understanding of these two cases, with particular attention to the way 

refugees invoke memory and their sense of national belonging to counter forced 

displacement. Topics to be covered include; the dream/right of return and the 

concepts of ‘home’ and ‘homeland;’ the ‘state-in-exile’ and the ‘refugee-

citizens;’ socio-economic and cultural transformations, such as in the family 

institution and in gender roles; qualitative research methods, especially, 

oral life-histories and narratives. The course will include lectures, open 

discussions, group work and reading time.



Instructor: Dr. Randa Farah, University of Western Ontario, Canada.



Dr. Randa Farah is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of 

Western Ontario. She acquired her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto on 

Palestinian popular memory and reconstructions of identity in al-Baq’a refugee 

camp in Jordan. Dr. Farah was a research associate with CERMOC in Jordan, 

where she was involved in a comprehensive study on the United Nations Relief 

and Works Agency (UNRWA). She is an associate researcher at the Refugee 

Studies Center at the University of Oxford involved in research projects on 

children and adolescents in Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee camps funded by 

the Mellon Foundation. Together with a lawyer, she taught a short course 

titled Palestinian Refugees and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

More recently, Farah has conducted a pilot project funded by the Social 

Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in Canada, examining 

obstacles to repatriation in refugee cases, including refugees from Western 

Sahara and the Balkans. Her publications and lectures reflect her work in the 

areas of displacement and refugees, memory/history and identity, nations and 

nationalism, gender, humanitarian aid, and children and youth.



The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, 

Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.



See Below for application procedures.



Tuition

The tuition fee for each course is US $100 for international participants and 

LE 170 for Egyptians and Residents of Egypt.  A limited number of tuition 

waivers are available for refugees upon request.



Application procedures

Please send your updated curriculum vitae and a letter of application stating:



a)       Your Interest in the Summer School.

b)       The course(s) you are applying for.

c)       Why the course(s) is/are important to your work or academic interest.

d)      State if you are applying for a tuition waiver, and why.



Addressed to:



Ms. Maysa Ayoub                                                             

Assistant to Director                                                        

Forced Migration and Refugee Studies                      

American University in Cairo                                       

FMRS/AUC, 113 Kasr El Aini Street, PO Box 2511,

Cairo 11511, Egypt

Email: [log in to unmask]

Tel: (202) 7976626

Fax (202) 7976629



Deadline for applications is May 10th, 2005





For further information regarding accommodation in Cairo and further updates 

on FMRS up-coming events access: www.aucegypt.edu/fmrs (under Outreach).



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