Law Department Lecture Series: Palestinian Right of Return

Ibrahim Awad

Professor of Practice in Global Affairs and Director, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies

The American University in Cairo

Ibrahim Awad is at present Professor of Practice in Global Affairs and Director, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, at the American University in Cairo. He holds a BA degree in political science from Cairo University and a Ph.D degree in political science from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland. He has worked for the League of Arab States, the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, holding positions of Secretary of the Commission, UN-ESCWA, Director, ILO Sub-regional Office for North Africa and Director, ILO International Migration Programme. He currently is Chair of the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), hosted by the World Bank, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on International Migration (EuroMedMig) and Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He also serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals.

Susan Akram

Clinical Professor of Law School of Law

Boston University

Professor Susan Akram is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA),

Georgetown University School of Law (JD), Oxford University (MA), and the Institut International des Droits del'Homme (Diplome). She directs BU Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, in which she supervises students engaged in international advocacy in domestic, international, regional, and UN fora. She teaches or 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). Her articles and book chapters include “Palestinian Exceptionalism, Whether it Matters, and the Role International Agencies Play” in the Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies; “The Arab Israel Conflict,” (with Michael Lynk) in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Law; and “Temporary Protection as an Instrument for Implementing the Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees” in the Boston University International Law Journal.

Ardi Imseis

Queen’s University

Assistant Professor of Law

Ardi Imseis is interested in the intersection of power, politics, law, and justice, and the practical impact of those phenomena on international relations in general and on underrepresented peoples in particular. Professor Imseis is currently working on a book which critically examines the gulf between international law and United Nations action, using the question of Palestine as a case study. He comes to Queen’s following a 12-year career as a UN official in the Middle East, first with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and then with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Since leaving the UN, Imseis has continued to engage in high-level public advocacy on international law, peace and security, including a number of invited addresses to the UN Security Council. In December 2019, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights appointed Imseis a Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, a commission of inquiry mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report on violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the conflict in Yemen. He also serves as the Associate Academic Director of the International Law Programs that Queen's Law offers at the Bader International Study Centre, Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, United Kingdom.

Professor Imseis’s scholarship has appeared in, inter alia, the American Journal of International Law, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and the University of British Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (2008-2019), Visiting Research Scholar, Department of Law, American University in Cairo and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School.

Imseis is admitted to the practice of law in the province of Alberta. Between 2010 and 2011, he served as Senior Legal Counsel to the Honourable Catherine A. Fraser, Chief Justice of Alberta.

Tamara Alrifai

Acting Director of External Relation and Director of Strategic Communications

UNRWA

Communications and Advocacy expert with experience working in complex humanitarian and human rights contexts in various countries. Networker, public speaker and writer with vast experience in media relations, representation and campaigning. Focused on on human rights, development and humanitarian advocacy, with a penchant for culture including cuisine. Native of Syria, fluent in Arabic, English, French and Spanish, and married with three children.