CMRS Summer Short Courses July 9 - 27, 2017
http://schools.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/outreach/Pages/Summer2017ShortCourses.aspx 

The Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at The American University in Cairo (AUC) is offering the following short courses during the month of July 2017:

1.  Addressing Refugee Crises in the Middle East and North Africa: Policy and Practice (July 9 - 13, 2017) by Shaden Khallaf, Senior Policy Advisor for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) MENA Bureau.

2.  Advanced Refugee Law: Developing Strategies Of Legal Engagement At The Frontier Of The International Refugee Regime (July 16 - 20, 2017) by Martin Jones, Senior lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York.

3.  Palestinian Refugees (July 23 - 27, 2017) by Tahreer Araj, Assistant professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo.

Eligibility for all courses

Requirements: These courses are offered for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers as well as practitioners working with migrants and refugees. A minimum knowledge of displacement and migration terminologies and context is a requirement for participation in any of the three courses.

All courses are conducted in English and no translation facilities are provided. Participants should have a very good command of the English language. Each course will run from 9.30 am till 4pm for five days.

Interested applicants can apply for one course or for all courses.

Number of Participants: minimum of 12 in each course
NB: Non- Egyptian applicants are strongly encouraged to apply early because it takes more than one month to obtain Egyptian visa.

Dates and Location:
Courses will take place at the AUC premises. The exact location and room numbers will be forwarded to accepted participants before the start of the courses.

Course Descriptions

Addressing Refugee Crises in the Middle East and North Africa: Policy and Practice (July 9 - 13, 2017)

The Middle East and North Africa region is one which has been facing inter and intra-state conflict for decades, with forced displacement being a major consequence. How have the current refugee crises in the region been a determining factor in global politics? How can responses to refugee crises such as those in Syria, Yemen, Libya, or Iraq continue to be depoliticized, and the main principles of international refugee and humanitarian law be upheld? What are the prospects for solutions to protracted refugee crises in the region? And how can multi-stakeholder processes have a greater impact, in light of the September 2016 United Nations General Assembly Summit? This short course aims to analyze the contextual construction of refugee situations and the policy frameworks in place to address them in the largest displacement crises since World War II.

About the instructor: Shaden Khallaf is an expert on displacement and humanitarian affairs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She is currently the Senior Policy Advisor for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) MENA Bureau. With over 18 years of experience and travel across the region, her areas of work have included refugee women and child protection, return and post-conflict transitions, advocacy and communications, cooperation with regional organizations, goodwill ambassador management, prevention of violent extremism, and catalyzing strategic partnership policies for engagement with civil society, focusing on academia and the private sector. Khallaf has previously lectured at the Department of Law and the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy of the American University in Cairo, and has offered short courses and seminars at numerous academic institutions around the world, as well as published several papers on displacement in MENA. Khallaf is a strong advocate for gender equality and women’s empowerment, and is continuously exploring ways to support women in the challenging humanitarian field.

Advanced Refugee Law: Developing Strategies Of Legal Engagement At The Frontier Of The International Refugee Regime (July 16- 20, 2017)

Is someone a refugee if he or she has fled to a state that hasn't signed the Refugee Convention or recognized refugees in its domestic law? If this person isn't a refugee, does he or she have any rights? What protection is owed to him or her by the new state of residence? How can the law, lawyers and legal institutions respond to the vulnerability, needs and capacities of such individuals?

From Lebanon through to Malaysia, a majority of the world's refugees live in a broad, contiguous swath of states that have not signed up to the core international agreements concerning how refugees should be protected. Furthermore, many states that are party to the Refugee Convention have not incorporated its obligations into domestic law. In such locations, refugees are often treated as "outside of the law" and subject to discrimination, abuse and other serious human rights violations. The answers to the opening questions for these people are too often in the negative and the result can be catastrophic for refugees. Refugees in these locations suffer a range of mistreatment as result of being seen as outside of the law, including irregular status, discriminatory treatment from landlords and employers, sexual harassment and assault with impunity (including at the hands of state officials), arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention (often in conditions so severe as to put their life at risk), and corporal punishments such as canning. This course seeks to systematically explore some recent successes by local providers of legal aid to refugees at the frontier of the international refugee regime and to discuss how these successes can form the basis for a new approach to refugee protection.

At its outset, the course will explore the limitations of the Refugee Convention and the international refugee regime that is built upon it. It will propose and develop an alternative approach based upon a broadly and diversely sourced “law of asylum”. The doctrinal sources relevant to this law will be elaborated, including international and regional human rights sources as well as domestic constitutional, statutory and customary sources, as will the practical challenges of such lawyering. Turning its critique of the international refugee regime upon itself, the course will also explore how more expansive understandings of what constitutes “law” may also reveal avenues and fora for advocacy. The course will also problematize the voice and agency of refugees in legal engagement and the meaning of and challenges facing those seeking to pursue legal empowerment. The course will draw heavily upon case studies sourced from jurisdictions traditionally seen as at the frontier of the international refugee regime, including mainly Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.

The course will be delivered through a range of means including lectures, small group work, and interactive exercises. Invited speakers drawn from the local legal and refugee communities will also apply the discussions of the course to the context of refugee protection in Egypt. The course assumes a familiarity with the Refugee Convention and the international refugee regime and is aimed at post-graduate students, practitioners, policy makers and lawyers with an interest in the role of the law in refugee protection.

About the instructor: Martin Jones is a senior lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. He has practiced as a refugee lawyer in Canada and has published widely on various topics in refugee law. Martin is the co-founder of the Egyptian Foundation for Refugee Rights, the leading provider of refugee legal aid in Egypt, and has consulted widely to legal aid organizations in the Middle East and Asia. He is the principal investigator of a multi-year collaborative international research project investigating the role of the law in refugee protection in the Global South.

Palestinian Refugees (July 23 - 27, 2017)

Palestinian Refugees are the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the majority of whom were dispossessed and expelled when the Israeli colonial state was created in 1948. Consequently the solution of the Palestinian refugee problem is the root for a just solution to the Palestinian question that has been challenged the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Law and refugee policy for decades.

This inter-disciplinary course will be an opportunity for students to engage directly with the major practical and theoretical issues connected with the background of the Palestinian refugee crisis, with special attention to the socio- political historical context and legal status of Palestinian refugees in the region (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel).

Through a mix of lectures, working group exercises and interactive sessions, students examine critically the historical, political, legal and ideological forces that have shaped Palestinian refugees turbulent circumstances and participate actively in the contemporary debates in international law and analyze the specific context of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

The key themes, which have taken emergent focus in the debate on the Palestinian refugee crisis, are statelessness, right of return, repatriation, self-determination, restitution compensation and protection. These themes are critically examined along with current discussions about the respective roles of UNRWA and UNHCR in the Palestinian refugee case.

We hope to attract a diverse group of students who have both personal and professional interest in refugee policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The course is intended to be a stimulating experience for people who are familiar with issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but would like a broader critical or theoretical perspective, as well as for people who have experience with refugee, humanitarian, or international issues but who would like an intensive introduction to Palestinian refugees. Taking advantage of the short course format, the course will include a number of simulations and small group exercises.

Each of the five days of the course will be organized around a theme related to Palestinian refugees.
About the Instructor: Tahreer Araj is an activist scholar who works at American University in Cairo as Assistant professor of Sociology. Tahreer received her PhD in Human and Community Development from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in USA. She accomplished her BA in Sociology and a MA in Gender, Development and Law from Birzeit University in Palestine. As a Palestinian, Dr. Tahreer worked for ten years with a number of grassroots NGOs and international agencies in Palestine and leading many researches and initiatives about Palestinian refugees. She had been also working as a gender expert and consultant with several International development agencies and local NGOs in Egypt.

Her current research and teaching interests extend to a range of topics in; Social Movements; Community Mobilization; Refugees and Identity; Community Organizing and Development; Gender and Development; Cooperatives; Palestinian Women’s Movement; Middle East Social Movements. Dr. Tahreer just finished working on a research to be published by Institute for Palestine studies examining the change in relationships between Egypt and Palestine and its impact on future solutions to the Palestinian question.

Deadlines
- Deadline for submitting applications for all courses: 15 of June, 2017
- Deadline for paying course deposit (30% of the course’s fee): 5 days after receiving the notification of acceptance

Tuition Fees:
1) The fee for International participants is $ 500 per course. Participants are expected to pay a 30% of the total fees ($150) as a deposit.
2) The Fee for Egyptians and residents in Egypt is EGP 4000. Participants are expected to pay a 30% of the total fees (EGP 1200) as a deposit.
Please pay attention to the deposit deadline and kindly note that the deposit is non-refundable. More information on payment method will be provided to accepted participants.
Tuition fees will cover course materials and two coffee breaks per course per-day. Participants are responsible for securing their visa, and cover the expenses of their travel to Egypt, as well as their accommodation and local transportation in Egypt.
Independent researchers and students from Egypt and the global south can apply for a limited number of scholarships for tuition waiver. The accepted participants for tuition waiver would still be responsible for their travel expenses and accommodation in Cairo. Tuition waiver is not intended for participants who can be funded by their own institutions.

Application Information:
To apply for the courses:
1. Fill out the application form. The form is available on CMRS website:  http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/outreach/Pages/ShortCourses.aspx
2. Send the application form to [log in to unmask] with your most recent C.V; Att. Naseem Hashim

Applicants may apply to and be accepted in more than one course. Please do not hesitate to contact [log in to unmask] if you have any difficulty with the application process.

Applicants accepted for the course will be notified by email within a week after the deadline for submitting the application.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note: The material contained in this communication comes to you from the Forced Migration Discussion List which is moderated by the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the RSC or the University. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this message please retain this disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources.

E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Posting guidelines: http://www.forcedmigration.org/research-resources/discussion/forced-migration-discussion-list-posting-guidelines
Subscribe/unsubscribe: http://tinyurl.com/fmlist-join-leave
List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/forced-migration.html
RSS: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?RSS&L=forced-migration
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/refugeestudies
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/refugeestudiescentre