September 24 – October 8, 2015

The Refugee Law Initiative (School of Advanced Study, University of London) and the Center for International Criminal Justice (VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands) are interested in discussing how States respond to the issue of excluded asylum seekers and other migrants who are suspected of serious criminality but cannot be removed from a host state. This ‘unremovability’ may be due to practical obstacles such as the lack of means to send the person to their country of origin, or legal impediments such as where human rights standards prevent removal (attempts to extradite alleged Rwandan genocidaires and the long-running saga over the removal of Abu Qatada from the UK are cases in point). The range of measures adopted by different countries suggests that States do not know how to respond effectively to this issue.

Key questions we’re interested in discussing include:

• What is the scale of the problem of unreturnable migrants/asylum seekers suspected of serious criminality? Which (new) groups of persons are likely to be most affected in the coming years?
• How can States effectively address the need to ensure the integrity of the international refugee regime by not providing safe haven to the perpetrators of serious crimes, while adhering to their international human rights obligations? Are instruments such as Memoranda of Understanding or host-country prosecution effective ways to balance these competing objectives?
• Can the ‘legal limbo’ in which such unreturnable persons find themselves be addressed and their situation resolved one way or the other? What approaches do or should States adopt when faced with (criminal) migrants and asylum seekers that cannot be removed for an indefinite period of time?
• What are the human costs of the current lack of an effective response to the issue of unreturnable migrants? How can the human rights of those so at the edges of protection be ensured?

This discussion builds on a one-day preliminary workshop held at VU University Amsterdam in March 2015. Please click here for further details of the workshop and a selection of the papers that were presented.  An international Conference on this topic will be held at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in January 2016. The Call for Papers is available here.

(The ‘Undesirable and Unreturnable?’ project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council)

Contributors:

Jennifer Bond, Assistant Professor, co-director of the Refugee Assistance Project, Faculty Director of the Ottawa Refugee Hub and Refugee Law Research Team (RLRT) and member of the Public Law Group, Faculty of Law, University of OttawaIntroductory Comments

Sarah Singer, Lecturer in International Human Rights Law, Director of the MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of London “Undesirable and Unreturnable’ in the UK

Joris van Wijk, Associate Professor of Criminology, Executive director Center for International Criminal Justice (CICJ), VU University Amsterdam

October 28 – December 2, 2014

(Sponsored by the Refugee Research Network (RRN); organized by the RRN’s Gender & Sexuality Cluster).

The Refugee Research Network (http://www.refugeeresearch.net) and the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) Project (http://crs.yorku.ca/bher) are interested in how ideologies of masculinity and femininity impact access to education for those living in refugee camps.

Masculinity and femininity are categories that are not value neutral but instead are politically, socially and culturally constructed through gender discourses that value the former over the latter. The ideology of gender dichotomization and hierarchy that values masculinity over femininity has found wide acceptance and remains largely unchallenged. The aim of this forum is to engage you in a discussion that will enrich our understanding of the ways in which constructions of what it means to be male and female has a bearing on access to education for individuals living in refugee camps.

Concurrently, we are in the process of preparing an annotated bibliography onthe same topic. We welcome your suggestions as to scholarly research that we could include in this project.

Before contributing to this forum’s discussion, please consider the following questions:

• What role do ideologies of masculinity and femininity play in creating policies governing lives in refugee camps?
• What role do these ideologies play in everyday lives of people living in refugee camps?
• What role do these ideologies play in access to education for men and women living in refugee camps?
  

Information obtained through this forum will be compiled and posted on the RRN website, and shared with BHER partners.

We thank you in advance for your participation.

The link to the forum is here: http://refugeeresearch.net/ms/forums/2014/10/07/impacts-of-ideologies-of-masculinity-and-femininity-in-access-to-education-in-context-of-forced-migration/.

To contribute to the forum discussion, please go to http://refugeeresearch.net/ms/forums/how-to-participate/. If you are not a member of the RRN community, please register as new user. If you are a member already, just log-in, write and post.

Guest Contributors:

Dacia Douhaibi, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography,
Research Assistant, BHER Project, York University, Canada;

Don Dippo, Professor, Faculty of Education,
Member, Executive Committee, Centre for Refugee Studies,
Co-lead, BHER Project, York University, Canada;

Emily Antze, Program Administrator, BHER Project, York University, Canada;

Farhia Abdi, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education,
TA, BHER Project, York University, Canada;

Janette Holmes, Course Director, Faculty of Education, York University, Canada,
Instructor, BHER Project;

Jennifer Vadeboncoeur, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Canada,
Instructor, member of the Gender and Equity Committee, BHER Project;

Lorraine Otoide, Course Director, Faculty of Education, York University, Canada,
Instructor, BHER Project;

Marta Bak, MA Social Anthropology,
Research Assistant, BHER Project, RRN, York University, Canada;

Wanjiku Khamasi, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Science, Chepkoilel University College, Moi University, Nairobi, Kenya,
Co-chair, Gender and Equity Committee, BHER Project;

Wenona Giles, Professor, Anthropology, Scholar, Centre for Refugee Studies,
Co-lead, BHER Project, York University, Canada.

(Sponsored by the Refugee Research Network (RRN); organized by the RRN’s Gender & Sexuality Cluster).

The Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) Project (http://crs.yorku.ca/bher) and the Refugee Research Network (RRN) (http://www.refugeeresearch.net) are interested in how security in the Dadaab refugee camps may affect the access of women to the BHER university courses that will be offered just outside the perimeter of the camps as of August 2014.  We are in the process of preparing a “Gender Sensitive Security Policy” for the BHER Project and would appreciate your input on the following questions.  Please have a look at the BHER website http://crs.yorku.ca/bher  before contributing to a discussion on any of the questions below:

• How should we define security for refugee women in the Dadaab camps?
• What security issues may affect refugee women’s access to university courses in the BHER Learning Centre?  How can these be addressed?
• What can be done/built into a policy on gender-sensitive security?

Guest contributors:

Wenona Giles, Professor, Anthropology, Scholar, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada Co-lead, Borderless Higher Education for Refugees Project

Eileen Pittaway, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, Honorary Associate (Previously Centre Director), Centre for Refugee Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Dacia Douhaibi, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, Research Assistant, BHER Project, York University, Toronto, Canada

Marta Bak, MA Candidate, Research Assistant, BHER Project, York University, Toronto, Canada

Amani El Jack, Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, Lecturer of Women’s Leadership in a Global Perspective, McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA

(co-sponsored by the Refugee Law Initiative as a follow up to their conference ‘On the Borders of Refugee Protection: The Impact of Human Rights Law on Refugee Law – Comparative Practice and Theory held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London on 13th and 14th November 2013)

Final Conference Report

Guest contributors:

	Lilian Tsourdi, Institute for European Studies, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium
	Martin Jones, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York
	Heaven Crawley, Centre for Migration Policy Research, Swansea University