FAHAMU REFUGEE LEGAL AID

Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE: Director

Barbara is a legal anthropologist. From 1982-96, she founded/directed the Centre for Refugee Studies, University of Oxford. From 1997-2000 she conducted research in Uganda and Kenya where she began the Refugee Law Project, Uganda. In 2000-2008 she was in Cairo where she helped begin the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, at the American University where she also taught and also founded a legal aid for refugees in Cairo which has become the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA).

Martin Jones: Director, Research and Training

Martin is a lawyer and specialist on refugee law. He practiced refugee law in Canada and has taught at the Centre for Refugee Studies (Canada), the University of East London (UK), the University of Michigan (USA), the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). He has provided training to legal aid NGOs in Egypt, Hong Kong, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey. With Dr. Harrell-Bond, he implements the Asia Legal Aid training programme funded by USIP, the programme funded by the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on contemporary forms of Slavery for training in Egypt and Turkey, and is a Resource person for www.frlan.org .

Victoria Goodban: Secretary, SRLA Network, and Moderator, Fahamu list-serv

Vicky joined the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network in January 2010 after completing an LLM in international humanitarian and refugee law at Nottingham University. She has previous experience working for a national charity in London in a marketing and communications capacity and has undertaken voluntary work in the UK with the Rift Valley Institute (London) and overseas for NGOs in India (Development in Action) and Madagascar (Azafady). She has now taken up the position of Gender and Refugee Project Officer with Oxfam Cymru/Wales and continues to moderate the list-serv and serve as Secretary for the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network.

Guglielmo Verdirame, Adviser

Guglielmo Verdirame holds a degree in Law from the University of Bologna and a PhD from the London School of Economics and is Professor of International Law at the Department of War Studies and the School of Law at King's College London. Before taking on this position, he was a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. His main areas of research and teaching are public international law, and legal and political philosophy. His publications include: Rights in Exile, co-authored with Barbara Harrell-Bond (Berghahn Books, 2005), and The UN and Human Rights: Who Guards the Guardians? (Cambridge University Press, 2011). He practises as a Barrister from 20 Essex Street chambers. He is a trustee of two charities involved in the advancement of human rights through law: the Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance, and the Human Dignity Trust.

Merrill Smith, Adviser

Merrill Smith holds a B.A. from Columbia, a J.D. from Vanderbilt, an LL.M. from NYU, and the Diplome from the International Institute of Human Rights and is admitted to practice in the State of NY. He was the editor of the annual World Refugee Survey, (editions 2003-9), with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), and an active leader in the international civil society advocacy movement to end the human "warehousing" of refugees. He was the Washington Representative of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (2000-2), a leading lobbyist for increased appropriations to the U.S. Migration and Refugee Assistance account and for the establishment of Legal Orientation Presentations for immigration detainees. He also directed Church World Service's legal department representing Haitian asylum seekers from Guantanamo in Miami, worked as human rights observer for the UN in Haiti, and directed Haiti Advocacy in the United States. Merrill advises the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network on international refugee protection and advocacy.

Interns, Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Network

Jackie Cartwright

Janet McGiffen

Leana Podeszfa

Editors, Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter

Themba Lewis: Co-editor

Themba holds a Graduate Diploma in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies from the American University in Cairo, an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford, and Level II Senior Caseworker Accreditation with the UK Legal Services Commission. He has taught on refugee rights in Bulgaria and Egypt, done casework for detained asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and is a Registered Member of the Law Society of England and Wales.

Nora Danielson: Co-editor

Nora is a DPhil Candidate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford. She earned an MPhil (Distinction) in Migration Studies, University of Oxford. Her current research is on refugees, refugee assistance and social change in the context of the aftermath of the 2005 refugee protest in Cairo, Egypt.

Yara Romariz Maasri: Co-editor

Yara holds a First Class Honours MA in English with Linguistics from the University of St Andrews, Scotland and an MSc in Forced Migration from the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Her editing experience includes work for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy, as well as a consultancy with the US Refugee Admissions Program Resettlement Support Center in Beirut, Lebanon, where she was also a staff member for over three years.

Sara Gonzalez Devant, Contributing Editor

Sara is a freelance researcher. She holds an MSc (Distinction) in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford. She has published on conflict induced displacement in Timor-Leste, and has conducted consultancy work for UNHCR. In 2009-10 she was a Sauvé Scholar in Montréal, Canada. More recently, she has worked on the theme of the intergenerational transmission of poverty for the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK.

Annemarie Hulbert, Contributing Editor

Annemarie is a volunteer administrator for non-profit organisations and is based in Oxford. From 2003 to 2004 she was the Settlement Team Administrator at Coventry Refugee Centre in central England. She holds an MPhil in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and an MA in Sociology from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Darshini Yoganathan, Editorial Intern