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At the invitation of the Migration Research Association in Turkey, on Tuesday 8th June 2021, Derya Ozkul moderated a short talk with Metin Corabatir, President of the Research Center on Asylum and Migration (IGAM), and Dr Neva Övünç Öztürk, Lecturer in Ankara University, Law Faculty as part of their seminars “Re-evaluating the 1951 Geneva Convention in its 70th Anniversary”

Watch now (in Turkish)

Following the large and unexpected increase in the numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe in 2015-16, the European Union struck a ‘migration deal’ with Turkey (2016). At the same time, the EU intensified its efforts to reach similar cooperation agreements with African states that are either source and/or transit countries for irregular migrants in the EU. The European Commission’s recently published ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ (2020) proposes a range of measures aimed at expanding and increasing the effectiveness of cooperation with non-EU countries in the governance of migration and refugee protection. What has been the experience of past efforts of cooperation between the EU and countries in the EU neighbourhood? What concerns does such cooperation raise and how might they be addressed? What are the policy preferences and constraints in the EU, Turkey, and African countries of migrants’ origin and transit?

Professor Cathryn Costello joins the panel to discuss this important area of policy at the European University Institute’s Geopolitics conference on 6th May 2021 16.00 (CEST) This is an invitation only event - register your interest.

This Fundamental Rights in Practice event on 22nd April 2021 discusses the challenges to the protection of fundamental rights presented by the use of facial recognition technology and by the lack of regulation on its development, sale and deployment.Amnesty International will present its global campaign "#BanTheScan" calling for a ban of FRT for the purpose of mass surveillance. Markus N. Beeko, Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany and Chair of the Amnesty Steering Group on Human Rights in the Digital Age, will discuss the human rights impact of FRT as well as regulation and governance approaches. Matt Mahmoudi, researcher and adviser on artificial intelligence and human rights at Amnesty International will presents Amnesty’s #BanThe Scan project, which provides activists with the resources to conquer the technology's use in their home town, and the "Amnesty Decoders" - a worldwide network of digital activists geolocating facial recognition-capable surveillance devices. Cathryn Costello, Professor of Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School and Co-Director of its Centre for Fundamental Rights will act as a commentator.

Professor Cathryn Costello joins a panel of experts to discuss ‘Border Crossings and the Right to Liberty’ in a webinair on 22nd April 2021 organised by Liverpool John Moore’s University Law School and the Criminal Law Group of the European Court of Human Rights.

States have the right to determine the entry, residence and expulsion of aliens in an immigration context. In exercising this power, States increasingly rely on confinement of irregular migrants and asylum seekers in transit zones and reception centres. However, these restrictions imposed on foreigners must comply with the right to liberty enshrined in Article 5 of the Convention.

Through the lens of the Court’s case law, speakers will explore, inter alia, the following issues: the tensions between border confinement of foreigners and the European system of protection of human rights; the conditions under which confinement in transit zones and reception centres amounts to deprivation of liberty; the lawfulness requirement and procedural safeguards under Article 5 as developed by the Court in relation to the detention of migrants and asylum seekers.

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Caroline Nalule will speak on the topic ‘Formalising Refugee Recognition: Divergence of Interests and State Practices’, at a seminar organised by the Canterbury Institute, an Oxford-based centre for research and learning. The online seminar is scheduled for Wednesday, February 17, 17:00 – 18:30

Cathryn Costello represents RefMig at Kaldor Centre Virtual Conference 2020 ‘New Frontiers of Refugee Law in a Closed World’ on 18th November 2020. Professor Costello will discuss emerging and future regional challenges to refugee protection in the panel ‘Protection 360: Surveying refugee challenges across the regions’

Registration is essential.

For more information visit: www.kaldorconference.com

Forced Migration Review issue 65 with features on Refugee Status Determination and the GP20 Plan of Action: now available online www.fmreview.org/recognising-refugees.

In the main feature – ‘Recognising refugees’ – the authors of 21 articles examine refugee status determination systems worldwide: challenges, consequences and innovations. The second feature offers reflections on lessons and good practice emerging from the 2018–20 GP20 Plan of Action for IDPs. The magazine and the accompanying Editors’ briefing will be available online and in print in English, Arabic, Spanish and French.

We are pleased to share these new short videos highlighting key issues from the German Law Journal Special Issue 21.3 “Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations”

In the inaugural German Law Journal Specials episode, editors Cathryn Costello and Itamar Mann talk to German Law Journal editor Nora Markard about the idea and the challenges behind the Special issue, and where it takes us.

In the first #GLJShorts, Bașak Çalı, Cathryn Costello, Melanie Fink, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Itamar Mann, Lilian Tsourdi, and Yannis Kalpouzos present some of the main issues tackled in the Special Issue.

A new collaborative project on migration and refugee research launched at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) by hosting a virtual conference’ Flucht, Governance, Menschenrechte’ on 9th-10th July 2020. Cathryn Costello was part of the panel moderated by Dr. Franck Düvell that discussed ‘The Global Compacts for Migration and on Refugees: current challenges’.

An exciting new collaboration begins between the Refugee Studies Centre and Hertie Institute as Professor Cathryn Costello joins Hertie to co-direct the new Centre for Fundamental Rights alongside RefMig advisory board member Professor Basak Cali. Read the announcement from the Hertie School

The launch event took place on 20/02/2020 gathering together an audience of 200 to listen to an expert panel discuss ‘Are fundamental rights losing or gaining ground?’ Find out more and listen to a podcast of the full discussion.

Is Europe Losing it’s Democratic Compass? This was the question that brought together a global group of legal scholars to a conference co-organised by Hasselt University and Lund University on 13th-14th February 2020. Cathryn Costello discussed the ‘Rule of Law, Authoritarian Legalism and Refugees’ in a panel on Migrants’ Rights and the Rule of Law.

See the full conference agenda

With Professor Maja Janmyr and Dr Lewis Turner, RefMig leader Cathryn Costello will be contributing to a work package in the Horizon 2020-project ASILE, coordinated by CEPS (Brussels). The project studies the interactions between emerging international protection systems and the United Nations Global Compact for Refugees (UN GCR), with particular focus on the European Union’s role and contribution. The work package – ‘Refugee Recognition, Self-reliance and Rights’ will facilitate a better understanding of how refugee protection is allocated and the rights enjoyed by refugees, as well as clarify the link between ‘refugeehood’ and the quality of refugee protection, taking work rights as an important litmus test for this protection. It will provide an in-depth comparative case study on the refugee recognition regimes in Jordan and Bangladesh.

Who is involved in the process of refugee recognition? What are the obstacles in providing protection? These questions were the starting point for an innovative workshop on Recognising Refugees held in December 2019 in Berlin, organised by RefMig and the DeZIM-Kolleg project. Themes discussed on the day were: methodological challenges, contested grounds and vulnerabilities, the role of the judiciary and the role of refugee recognition in the ‘Global South’ - the role of UNHCR. See the full workshop agenda.

As part of a workshop “Identities in Times of Conflict and Displacement. The Case of Syria” Derya Ozkul delivered a paper “Syrian Refugees in Lebanon and their Wish to Return to a ‘new Syria’” on the 29th of November at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

Call for Papers on Recognising Refugees to participate in a Workshop at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung on 12th December 2019.

At the workshop, scholars (at any career stage, including doctoral researchers) are invited to present work-in-progress on refugee recognition, ideally in the form of draft papers that will be circulated to all the participants in advance of the workshop. Proposals are welcome from any pertinent discipline, in particular empirical legal studies, political science and sociology. Preference will be given to papers that engage in comparative analysis across regimes, and/or develop innovative methodologies to study refugee recognition.

The call for papers is now closed.