Responding to the Challenges of Statelessness in the MENA

Please note: Simultaneous Arabic interpretation will be available during this event
خيار الترجمة الفورية باللغة العربية متوفر

This webinar, co-organised with Boston University School of Law's International Human Rights Clinic, will explore research outputs from their project on the challenges of statelessness in the region. To find out more about the project click here.

The understanding and regulation of who is and who is not a member of each state, and why communities have been rendered stateless, has long been a regional challenge and touches on some of the most fundamental concepts regarding nationality in the Middle East and North Africa. The webinar will explore trends such as the link between statelessness and displacement, children's rights, civil documentation and discrimination, highlighting region-wide advocacy initiatives that can fill in knowledge gaps on this issue and address statelessness challenges.

Susan Akram directs the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University's School of Law, in which she supervises students engaged in international advocacy in domestic, international, regional, and UN fora. She has taught courses in International Human Rights, Refugee and Migration law, US Immigration law and Palestinian Refugees under International Law. She has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt and at Al-Quds and Birzeit Universities in Palestine. She regularly teaches in the summer institute on forced migration at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, and in various venues in the Middle East on refugee law. Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee, forced migration and human and civil rights issues, with an interest in the Middle East, the Arab, and Muslim world. Her book projects include Still Waiting for Tomorrow: The Law and Politics of Unresolved Refugee Crises (with Tom Syring); International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Rights-Based Approach to Middle East Peace (with Mick Dumper, Michael Lynk and Ian Scobbie).

Zahra Albarazi is a human rights lawyer and activist working in the field of statelessness. Zahra is co-director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme. Her particular interests are statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa and the impacts of statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws on women.

Maysa Ayoub is the Associate Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo. She has over 15 years of research and teaching experiences in the field of migration and refugee studies. She researched and published in the field on issues related to asylum policies, livelihoods of refugees, and public opinion and media attitude towards refugees and immigrants. Her PhD on Euro-Mediterranean issues is from the faculty of Economics and Political Science of Cairo University and her MA in Sociology is from the American University in Cairo.

Lina Abou Habib is the Interim Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut. She also teaches undergraduate and graduate gender courses at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut. She is a Board Member for Gender at Work as well as the MENA strategic advisor for the Global Fund for Women. Abou Habib is also a member of the editorial Board of the Gender and Development journal published by Oxfam. Lina Abou-Habib was previously the Executive Director of Women’s Learning Partnership. She has worked extensively with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and with several international and regional organisations in designing and managing programmes in the Middle East and North Africa region on issues related to gender and citizenship, economy, trade and gender and leadership.

Bronwen Manby is a leading authority on nationality law and statelessness in Africa. She has written on a wide range of human rights issues in Africa, with particular interests in South Africa and Nigeria (especially the oil industry in the Niger Delta), and in continental developments in human rights law. Recently, her research and writing have focused on statelessness, comparative nationality law, and legal identity, and she has worked closely with UNHCR on its global campaign against statelessness and as also advised the World Bank initiative on 'identification for development'. Bronwen has degrees from Oxford and Columbia Universities, is qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales, and in 2015 was awarded a doctorate by Maastricht University faculty of law. At the LSE Middle East Centre, Bronwen was Principal Investigator on the research project Preventing Statelessness among Migrants in North Africa and their Children: Role of Host and Sending States in Providing Birth Registration and Identity Documents.

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