Become part of a virtual movement
This is a call for applications for volunteer researchers for the 
Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network (SLRAN), a new FAHAMU global project 
(see www.fahamu.org). The SLRAN project is coordinated by Dr. Barbara 
Harrell-Bond.
Much of this work will be virtual, but ideally some volunteers will be 
in Oxford. Not only would you be contributing to the prevention of 
violations of the rights of refugees in the ‘global South’, but if 
accepted, your work could be added to your curriculum vitae or even 
possibly be used for your own degree work.

Background to Project
Less than .01% of refugees will be ‘resettled’ to countries where their 
rights are respected; most will remain in the global South where the 
observance of rights for everyone, but especially refugees, is generally 
deteriorating. With the increasing restrictions to ‘getting in’, the 
very concept of asylum itself is under threat around the world.

The basic infrastructure for beginning to enforce rights is missing in 
most countries. 45 States have not ratified the 1951 Convention or its 
1967 Protocol, some of them hosts to major refugee populations. Few 
States in the global South have domestic legalisation to regulate 
refugee matters and where domestic legislation exists, it is often not 
in conformity with the standards of international human rights law or 
the 1951 Convention. Most Southern States are in urgent need of law 
reform to bring their domestic refugee law into conformity with 
international standards. Refugee law is rarely taught as a subject by 
faculties of law or even by masters’ courses in human rights. 
Increasingly, refugees in the South are subject to refugee status 
adjudication but there are only a handful of NGOs providing them with 
pro bono legal aid to navigate this process.  Even with the exponential 
increase in human rights organizations, there are still many countries 
where there is no agency that is promoting refugee rights because the 
‘human rights industry’ has somehow forgotten that refugees have the 
same rights as all other humans. The problem of statelessness, a 
responsibility accorded to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 
is on the increase and is scarcely being addressed.

With even this brief introduction, it is evident that the challenges the 
SRLAN has taken on are enormous and can only be accomplished by an 
‘army’ of committed volunteers. Many tasks for which you are needed 
involve country specific research and corresponding with 
individuals/organizations identified; others involve specific legal 
research, e.g. one project already begun is a review and evaluation of 
domestic refugee legislation in each Southern country where such laws 
exist. This SRLAN project will be coordinated by Marina Sharpe, Asylum 
Access, and Fatima Khan, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town and 
volunteers are urgently required. Devising a strategy to influence law 
schools to introduce refugee law will be another project that will 
necessitate research and eventually forming a global association of 
refugee law teachers. Another project will involve identifying human 
rights and/or refugee rights NGOs by country and investigating their 
potential for providing legal aid. Other research projects that have 
been identified include statelessness. If you are interested in 
volunteering for any of these projects, please send a cover letter 
indicating your interests, the number of hours per week that you could 
commit, and your curriculum vitae to [log in to unmask]

Dr. Barbara E. Harrell-Bond


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