Refugee Law & Policy Group
Welcome to the Refugee Law and Policy Group at UNSW Law
This website provides an overview of the Faculty's wide range of research activities and clinical programs in refugee and migration law.
More information, and links to publications, can be found by clicking on the profiles of the people listed below.
We welcome applications from prospective Masters and PhD students. We are also happy to respond to media inquiries relating to refugees, asylum seekers and migration.
- Academics
- Professorial Visiting Fellows
- Visiting Fellows
- PG Research Students
- News and Events
- Current Research and Publications
- Research Grants
- Other UNSW Links
Academics
Professor Jane McAdam
Professor Jane McAdam (BA (Hons), LLB (Hons) (Sydney), DPhil (Oxford)) is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and the Director of Research at UNSW Law. She is also the Director of the International Refugee and Migration Law project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and the convenor of the Faculty's Refugee Law and Policy Group. She is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, and was the Director of its International Summer School in Forced Migration in 2008.
Jane publishes widely in the area of international refugee law, in particular on complementary protection and climate change-related displacement. In addition to her many articles, book chapters, and parliamentary submissions, she is the author of Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, in press), Climate Change and Australia: Warming to the Global Challenge (with B Saul, S Sherwood, T Stephens and J Slezak, Federation Press, Sydney, in press), Complementary Protection in International Refugee Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007), The Refugee in International Law (with GS Goodwin-Gill, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007); and the editor of Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2010) and Forced Migration, Human Rights and Security (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2008).
Jane holds a four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship which examines human rights approaches to slow-onset climate change-related displacement and relocation in the Pacific. She also holds two Australian Research Council Discovery Grants. The first is a three-year grant entitled 'Weathering Uncertainty: Climate Change "Refugees" and International Law',hich supports Jane’s research on climate-induced displacement. The second is a four-year grant on 'Immigration Restriction and the Racial State, c 1880 to the Present', which examines the history of medico-legal border control in the Asia-Pacific region. This grant is held in conjunction with two historians, Professor Alison Bashford at the University of Sydney and Dr Sunil Amrith at the University of London.
Jane is a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the legal aspects of climate change-related displacement, and has advised a number of governments on matters pertaining to refugee law, statelessness, and climate change-related movement. She is the Associate Rapporteur of the Convention Refugee Status and Subsidiary Protection Working Party for the International Association of Refugee Law Judges; the Vice-President of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Sydney; and a Member of International Law Association (World) International Teaching Committee. She has worked on a variety of projects for the European Union, Refugee Council of Australia, Refugee Review Tribunal, Green Cross Australia, the Czech–Helsinki Committee, and Amnesty International. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian International Law Journal, a former General Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, and a former member of the Editorial Board of the Sydney Law Review.
Complementary protection resources page: http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/node/2983
Climate Change and Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Legal and Policy Responses conference (podcast and papers, November 2011): http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/events/climate-change-and-migration-asia-pacific-legal-and-policy-responses
Click here for a full profile and list of publications.
Contact details:
j.mcadam@unsw.edu.au
9385 2210
Bassina Farbenblum
Bassina Farbenblum leads the Australian Human Rights Centre’s Migrant and Refugee Rights Project, which engages in research and law reform initiatives to advance the human rights of refugees and migrants in Asia and Australia. Bassina also directs UNSW’s Human Rights Clinic, in which students gain practical lawyering experience in human rights advocacy, law reform and litigation in domestic, regional and international settings, focused on the rights of migrants and refugees.
Bassina’s current research projects focus on migrant workers’ access to justice in the Asia Middle East Migration Corridor (funded by a grant from the Open Society Foundations); the human rights law implications of Australian laws, policies and practices aimed at preventing asylum seekers from reaching Australia using people smugglers; human rights accountability for Australia’s interception and detention of asylum seekers abroad; and the application of international refugee law by U.S. courts and tribunals. Her research also separately focuses on clinical pedagogy and the teaching of human rights lawyering in Australia.
Bassina joined UNSW as a Senior Lecturer in 2009. Previously, based in New York, Bassina directed the International Human Rights Project, a clinical program based at Seton Hall Law School in which she filed the first state-wide lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Bush-era immigration home raids. She represented numerous international law and human rights experts as amicus curiae before the US Supreme Court and various US appellate courts, on issues ranging from the legality of diplomatic assurances against torture to the constitutionality of indefinite detention of domestic ‘enemy combatants’. While in the US, Bassina was also a litigation attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, in its Immigrants’ Rights Project, and worked in private practice at WilmerHale LLP, where she argued the first US Court of Appeals case on the national-security exception to asylum. In Australia, at the Public Interest Advocacy Center and the Australian Human Rights Commission, Bassina litigated key cases on immigration detention and deportation, and advised parliament on immigration legislation.
Bassina has consulted to a range of local and international human rights organisations and institutions. She is currently on the Management Committees of the Refugee Research Centre. She is a member of the New York Bar and is admitted to practice as a solicitor in New South Wales.
Click here for a full profile and list of publications.
Contact details:
b.farbenblum@unsw.edu.au
9385 9528
Dr Michael Grewcock
Dr Michael Grewcock teaches Criminal Law, Penology and Criminology subjects at UNSW Law and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Prior to taking up an academic post, Dr Grewcock worked as a solicitor in London for 13 years, specialising in immigration, prison and criminal law. He has published in the areas of criminal law; prisoners’ rights; immigration detention and state crime. His recent research has focused on Australian border policing policy and practice, with an emphasis on the criminalisation and punishment of unauthorised migrants, particularly refugees. He is currently conducting research into the use of section 501 of the Migration Act to detain and deport former prisoners whose visas have been cancelled as a result of their criminal convictions; how the concepts of punishment and deterrence operate in relation to the policing of people-smuggling; and the impacts of Australia’s immigration detention policies. He is a member of the London based International State Crime Initiative (http://statecrime.org/); a member of the editorial board of the journal State Crime; and reviews editor for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.
Click here for a full profile and list of publications.
Contact details:
m.grewcock@unsw.edu.au
9385 9563
Professorial Visiting Fellows
Professor Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
University of Oxford
(September–October 2010)
2010 Julius Stone Visiting Fellow
Guy S. Goodwin Gill, MA, DPhil (Oxon), is a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Professor of International Refugee Law in the University of Oxford. He was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, and served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in various countries from 1976-1988. He has been a member of the Council of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) since 2007, a Patron of AsylumAid since 2008, and from 1997-2010 he was President of Refugee and Migrant Justice (formerly the Refugee Legal Centre). He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law (Oxford University Press) and was Editor-in-Chief from 1989-2001. Professor Goodwin-Gill has written extensively on refugees, migration, elections, and child soldiers. Recent publications include The Limits of Transnational Law, with Hélène Lambert, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010; Brownlie's Documents on Human Rights, with Ian Brownlie, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6th edn., 2010; The Refugee in International Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn. (with Dr Jane McAdam), 2007; Free and Fair Elections, Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd edn., 2006; 'The Search for the One, True Meaning...', in Goodwin-Gill & Lambert, eds., The Limits of Transnational Law: Refugee Law, Policy Harmonization and Judicial Dialogue in the European Union, 204-41; 'The Extra-Territorial Reach of Human Rights Obligations: A Brief Perspective on the Link to Jurisdiction', in Laurence Boisson de Chazournes & Marcelo G. Kohen, eds., International Law and the Quest for its Implementation/Le droit international et la quête de sa mise en oeuvre, Leiden: Brill, 2010, 293-308; 'The Politics of Refugee Protection', 27 Refugee Survey Quarterly 8-23 (2008); 'Forced Migration: Refugees, Rights and Security', in Jane McAdam, ed., Forced Migration, Human Rights and Security, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008, 1-18; 'The Extra-Territorial Processing of Claims to Asylum or Protection: The Legal Responsibilities of States and International Organisations', 9 UTS Law Review 26-40 (2007); 'Migrant Rights and “Managed Migration”,' in Chetail, V., ed., Mondialisation, migration et droits de l'homme: le droit international en question / Globalization, Migration and Human Rights: International Law under Review, Bruxelles: Bruylant, 2007, Vol. II, 161-187. Professor Goodwin-Gill is a Barrister and practices from Blackstone Chambers, London. Recent cases in which he has acted or been a member of the legal team, include R (Al-Jedda) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] UKSIAC 66/2008 (on statelessness); RB (Algeria) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2009] UKHL 10; [2009] 2 WLR 512 (on 'withdrawal' of refugee status); and R (Al Saadoon) v. Secretary of State for the Department of Defence [2008] EWHC 3098 (Admin); [2009] EWCA Civ 7; Application No. 61498/08, European Court of Human Rights – decision on admissibility, 30 June 2009 (on the extraterritorial application of human rights obligations); judgment on the merits, 2 March 2010. He has also represented the UNHCR on a number of occasions, including in the House of Lords in R (European Roma Rights Centre and others) v. Immigration Officer at Prague Airport and another (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees intervening) [2005] 2 AC 1, [2004] UKHL 55; and in the Court of Appeal in R (Al Rawi and others) v. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and another [2007] 2 WLR 1219, [2006] EWCA Civ. 1279.
While at UNSW, Professor Goodwin-Gill will teach the postgraduate course 'International Refugee Law'.
Contact details:
guy.goodwin-gill@law.ox.ac.uk
Visiting Fellows
Eleanor Taylor-Nicholson
Research Director on the Migrant Worker Access to Justice Project, Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW
Patrick Earle
Patrick Earle has been the Executive Director of the Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) since 2003 and has over 20 years of experience working in the human rights movement, both in Australia and internationally. Since 2003 Patrick has organised and facilitated over 25 human rights courses for the Diplomacy Training Program across the Asia-Pacific Region. From 1996 until 2003, Patrick worked with the Human Rights Council of Australia on its groundbreaking project on the relationship between human rights and development and is co-author of 'The Rights Way to Development – Policy and Practice'. Patrick previously worked for Amnesty International and produced Amnesty International's first International Campaigning Manual. Patrick is on the Steering Committee of UNSW's Initiative on Health and Human Rights, a Board Member of the Asia Pacific Regional Resource Centre on Human Rights Education and is a member of the Human Rights Council of Australia and a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Law.
Labour migration is one of the key human rights and public policy challenges of the Asia-Pacific. Since 2004, The Diplomacy Training Program (www.dtp.unsw.edu.au) has a thematic focus on the rights of migrants workers in and from the Asia-Pacific region. It has worked with regional NGO network, Migrant Forum Asia to organise and facilitate regional training programs focussed on developing the knowledge and skills of civil society advocates to promote the application of international human rights standards to policy and practice relating to migrant workers – including ILO conventions. In 2009, the Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions became a partner in the program and the program has focused on developing practical collaboration between NHRIs and civil society within and across borders. The programs bring together academics and practitioners from civil society across the region. Each program is informed by the knowledge and experience of participants who address the issues of labour migration on the ground across Asia.
For more information, see http://www.dtp.unsw.edu.au/
Contact details:
p.earle@unsw.edu.au
9385 3549
Sue Zelinka
Sue Zelinka did both her undergraduate and post-graduate studies at UNSW in the Arts faculty. After ten years in documentary production at ABC Television, she started her own research business and developed a particular interest in issues affecting people of non-English speaking background. Sue joined the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 1992 to work with the Race Discrimination Commissioner. While there, she wrote a number of monographs, articles and reports on racism and racial discrimination in Australia as well as a publication to mark the 20th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act. She also contributed a lay guide to the development of human rights law in Australia in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of the Australian People.
In 1997, Sue was appointed as a full-time member of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) where she served ten years. Early in her term at the RRT, she became involved with the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ) and was a foundation member of the Australasian Chapter. Sue served as a member of the IARLJ Governing Council from 2002 until 2008. After leaving the Tribunal, she took up the newly-created position of Development Director for the IARLJ, advancing the training of new refugee law judges and assisting contact between judges who determine refugee status around the world.
As the IARLJ Development Director, Sue was invited to become a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Law in August 2008. In February 2010, she organized an IARLJ regional conference at UNSW, in conjunction with a training workshop on refugee law for candidates from Asia and the Pacific region. The training workshop was run in conjunction with UNHCR and supported by UNSW Law. The previous year, Sue had taught at a similar UNHCR / IARLJ training workshop held in conjunction with the IARLJ World Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
For more information on the International Association of Refugee law Judges, see www.iarlj.org
Contact details:
suezelinka@bigpond.com
The photo, taken at the function on 20 August 2008 to mark the Fellowship, shows (from left to right): Professor David Dixon, Dean of UNSW Law; Dr Jane McAdam, Faculty member and associate IARLJ member; Sue Zelinka, IARLJ Development Director and newly-appointed Visiting Fellow; and Justice Tony North, then IARLJ President.
Professor Geoff Gilbert
University of Essex
(September 2010)
Geoff Gilbert is a Professor of Law in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law since 2002. He is author of 'Current Issues in the Application of the Exclusion Clauses' in Feller, Türk and Nicholson, Refugee Protection in International Law (2003), part of UNHCR's Global Consultations on the 50th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention. He was founding Director of Studies for UNHCR's annual Thematic Refugees and Human Rights course for judges, government officials and UNHCR staff at the International Institute for Humanitarian Law, Sanremo, Italy, from 2005 to 2007. He was Specialist Adviser to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights in its inquiry into the treatment of asylum-seekers, 2006–07. He was part of the Human Rights Centre's research programme on human rights in situations of acute crisis that was carried out on behalf of DFID. He has carried out human rights training on behalf of the Council of Europe and UNHCR in the Russian Federation (Siberia, the Urals and Kalmykskaya), Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo. He has advised governments on their laws in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the FSU, and was the Director of the OSCE training programme on combating torture for judges in Serbia and Montenegro. His areas of interest are international criminal law, the protection of refugees and other displaced persons in international law, the protection of minorities in international law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
While at UNSW, Professor Gilbert will teach the postgraduate course 'Advanced Issues in International Law', focusing on the position of minority groups in international law and international human rights law.
Contact details:
geoff@essex.ac.uk
Professor Kate Jastram
Berkley Law, University of California
(September 2010)
Kate Jastram joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2002. Prior to that, she was a legal advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1991 to 2001 in Geneva and in Washington, DC. Following graduation from Boalt, she practiced immigration and nationality law in San Francisco and directed a pro bono asylum program in Minneapolis. Her scholarly work explores the challenges states face in balancing protection for forced migrants with their national security concerns, by focusing on the intersections of refugee law, human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law.
Professor Jastram is an Associate Rapporteur of the Human Rights Nexus Working Party for the International Association of Refugee Law Judges, and has served as an expert on asylum issues for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent bi-partisan federal agency. She is a mentor for the San Francisco Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights' asylum program. She co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of UNHCR for the US Supreme Court in Negusie v Mukasey (2009). She has worked on a variety of other projects for UNHCR and IOM, participated in the Fifth Michigan Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law (on the Right to Work), and has taught at the International Institute for Humanitarian Law in Sanremo, Italy. She was a co-recipient of the Arthur C Helton Human Rights Award in 2005, given by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in recognition of outstanding service in advancing the cause of human rights.
Her current project, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is a comparative examination of War Crimes and Refugee Status, and the use of international humanitarian law and international criminal law in asylum adjudication, which she is working on with UNSW Associate Professor Jane McAdam, and Visiting Fellows Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill (Oxford) and Professor Geoff Gilbert (Essex).
Contact details:
kjastram@law.berkeley.edu
Postgraduate Research Students
Jessie Connell: PhD candidate
‘Population displacement in the context of climate change mitigation and adaption projects: An opportunity to develop the governance of environmentally-forced migration?’
Studies of environmentally-forced migration have typically focused on displacement arising from natural disasters, floods, pollution of water bodies, slow onset degradation and more recently, climate change. Development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) is a separate but overlapping field of forced migration in which population groups are forced and sometimes assisted to relocate as a result of large infrastructure developments, such as dam-building.
Jessie is interested in new types of displacement which cut across these fields. Her PhD topic concentrates on displacement which is occurring as a result of climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, especially those subsidised by the financial mechanisms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The focus of her research is on the governance of forced migration in the context of environmental change and development, the ways in which formal governance structures are negotiated by displaced communities and how these structures may support the livelihoods and psycho-social adaptation of those who are displaced. Jessie is currently identifying case studies for her PhD field work.
Click here for a full profile and list of publications.
Tamara Wood, PhD candidate
‘Does broader scope equal broader protection? Article I(2) of the 1969 Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa’
The so-called ‘expanded’ definition of a refugee in Article I(2) of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa has been widely praised for being more humanitarian, more reflective of current causes of displacement and providing better protection than its counterpart in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This thesis investigates the truth of these claims by seeking, first, to elaborate on the meaning of the definition’s terms, and second, to consider the impact of the definition on refugee protection in practice.
Click here for a full profile and list of publications.
Chantal Bostock: PhD candidate
'"Character" in the AAT's immigration jurisdiction'
This thesis explores the character test in various contexts relevant to deportation of non-citizens from Australia. In Australia, character – or poor character – has been an element upon which a non-citizen might be deported even before Federation. It is a common element in migration laws internationally. In recent years failure to satisfy the character test has become an increasingly common basis for excluding non-citizens from Australia. This reflects a growing international trend, exacerbated by recent terrorist attacks. In Australia, determinations are made by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) that are then subject to review in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and in limited circumstances, an appeal to the Federal Court.
This thesis analyses the concept of character and what it embodies in terms of rights to residency, especially exploring context where non-citizens have no links with their country of birth, but have major links with Australia through a lifetime since infancy of residency in Australia - but lack the magic birth location to confer Australian citizenship. What are the key rights of such people to continue to live in Australia and how are they determined? What extinguishes those rights and is it justifiable? How have policies evolved since the inception of s 501? To what extent do shifts in policy articulation in the 21st century reflect actual changes with respect to what is expected of the non-citizen long term permanent resident (and what they can expect of their country of residency) in deportation determinations? To what extent are international norms relevant and to what extent does the post-9/11 environment herald change? A particular feature of the thesis is examining notions of procedural fairness for those in danger of exclusion. This thesis analyses empirical data from actual case determinations from 2003-2012 (final date to be determined) to look at actual practice and theoretical notions.
Contact details:
c.bostock@student.unsw.edu.au
Niamh Kinchin: LLM (Research) candidate
'Accountable Decision-Making in the Global Context: An Australian Perspective'
This thesis considers the implications for States of an accountability deficit in the refugee status determination (RSD) procedures of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)? It is argued that UNHCR's RSD procedural standards do not sufficiently meet UNHCR's accountability obligations. When States adopt UNHCR RSD recommendations in their domestic immigration programs without applying domestic accountability mechanisms, their own accountability standards are diminished.
Contact details:
niamhkinchin@gmail.com
News and Events
International conference on ‘Climate Change and Migration in the Asia-Pacific: Legal and Policy Responses’, Sydney, 10–11 November 2011. Podcasts, papers and related media are available on the conference website:
Forced Migration Reading and Writing Group: We hold regular meetings throughout the semester. Please contact Tamara Wood for details: tamara.wood@unsw.edu.au.
The Asylum Debate, 21 September 2010
A video of the event can be seen here: https://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/the-asylum-debate
Current Research and Publications
Please see individuals' profiles via the links above.
Research Grants
Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, ‘Moving with Dignity: A Human Rights Approach to Slow-Onset Climate Change-Related Displacement and Relocation in the Pacific’ (Jane McAdam)
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Weathering Uncertainty: Climate Change “Refugees” and International Law’ (Jane McAdam)
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Immigration Restriction and the Racial State, c. 1880 to the Present’ (Jane McAdam, Alison Bashford (Sydney))
Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council International Opportunities Fund, ‘War Crimes and Refugee Status: The Application and Interpretation of International Humanitarian and International Criminal Law to the Adjudication of Refugee Status in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand’ (Jane McAdam, Guy Goodwin-Gill (Oxford), Geoff Gilbert (Essex), Kate Jastram (Berkeley), James Simeon (York University, Toronto))
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Exporting Risk: The Australian Deportation Project’ (Michael Grewcock, Sharon Pickering (Monash), Leanne Weber (Monash), Marie Segrave (Monash))
Open Society Foundations, ‘Transnational Access to Justice Project, Asia-Middle East Migration Corridor’ (Bassina Farbenblum, Sarah Paoletti (University of Pennsylvania))
Other UNSW Links
