American University in Cairo: Forced migration and refugee studies programme
Summer Short Courses for 2005 include:
- International Refugee and Human Rights Law
- Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Refugees
- Researching Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Identity: The Palestinian and Sahrawi Cases.
The American University in Cairo
THE FORCED MIGRATION AND REFUGEE STUDIES PROGRAM
Summer Short Courses 2005
· International Refugee and Human Rights Law
· Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Refugees
· Researching Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Identity: The Palestinian and Sahrawi Cases
International Refugee and Human Rights Law
5 - 9 June 2005
Course description:
This course will introduce participants to refugee and international human rights law, instructing them in the primary elements of the 1951 Geneva Convention as well as its interaction with the 1969 OAU Convention. There will be particular attention to some of the more controversial aspects of the refugee definition, including the internal flight alternative or "relocation principle" as well as the application of the exclusion clauses with regard to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Participants will be taught how to do Country-of-Origin Research, and to develop legal arguments in defense of asylum seekers case on first instance and appeals. Case studies will be discussed in small groups and interviewing, research and advocacy skills will be practiced.
Instructor: Perveen Ali, JD, Program Director of Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance – Egypt (AMERA)
Perveen Ali, JD, MSW, MA, completed her Juris Doctor at the University of Washington, where she specialized in international human rights and refugee law. She is currently serving as the Program Director of Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance-Egypt, a nongovernmental organization providing legal aid to asylum-seekers and refugees in Egypt. She has over twelve years of professional, academic, and research experience in the field of refugee protection and women’s rights in the US, Eastern Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East. She is the author of “The War on Terrorism: Testing the Legalist Limits of the Human Rights Regime”, an article published by the ACLU in 2004, written in collaboration with Professor Joan Fitzpatrick. She has conducted comparative research on the use of safe havens to contain internally displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan, the former Yugoslavia, and Sri Lanka; the prospects for legal, social, and political integration of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; the political economy of human trafficking and smuggling of women from the Philippines, and the use of rape in warfare in the former Yugoslavia and Vietnam.
The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.
See Below for application procedures.
Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Refugees
12 - 16 June 2005
Course description:
Understanding and meeting the psychosocial needs of refugees is essential to effective humanitarian intervention. This course aims to help psychosocial workers to enhance their knowledge of refugee needs and increase their ability to meet them appropriately. Topics will include cultural concepts of mental health and well being, basic interviewing and supportive counseling skills, working with translators, conceptualizing and treating refugee trauma, understanding and meeting children’s needs, managing stress and preventing burnout among humanitarian workers. Participants will be assigned to psychosocial teams to analyze and solve practical and ethical dilemmas that arise in this line of work. The course is limited to 30 participants.
Instructor: Dr. Nancy Peterson, State University of New York.
Dr. Nancy Peterson is a practicing clinical psychologist with a wealth of experience in psychosocial intervention and program development. She is presently the director of a psychological program for children with HIV at the Department of Pediatrics, Brooklyn Medical Center, State University of New York (SUNY). Dr. Peterson was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the American University in Cairo, taught a required course for the FMRS diploma entitled, ‘Psychosocial Issues in Forced Migration’, and was an active member of the Joint Steering Committee of the FMRS program. She first worked with internally displaced persons while conducting her dissertation research in Kampala, Uganda (1990-1993) and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in 1994. From 1994-1998, Dr. Peterson directed a psychosocial program for children with life-threatening illness, including some refugee families, in Washington, D.C. Together with Esther Dingemans, she completed a research study focused on the psychosocial needs of Sudanese refugee children living in Cairo. Dr. Peterson has visited psychosocial intervention programs for refugees and internally displaced persons in Uganda, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Nepal, and India. She has also conducted training sessions on meeting the psychosocial needs of refugees for professionals in Morocco and Azerbaijan.
The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.
See Below for application procedures.
Researching Popular Memory and Reconstructions of Identity: The Palestinian and Sahrawi Cases.
19 – 23 June 2005
Course description:
The national struggles against occupation and colonialism are central to the Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee experiences, a dimension that is muted in humanitarian discourse. Based on a bottom-up approach, and drawing mainly, if not exclusively, on anthropological research in refugee camps, this interactive course aims at providing participants with a more nuanced understanding of these two cases, with particular attention to the way refugees invoke memory and their sense of national belonging to counter forced displacement. Topics to be covered include; the dream/right of return and the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘homeland;’ the ‘state-in-exile’ and the ‘refugee-citizens;’ socio-economic and cultural transformations, such as in the family institution and in gender roles; qualitative research methods, especially, oral life-histories and narratives. The course will include lectures, open discussions, group work and reading time.
Instructor: Dr. Randa Farah, University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Randa Farah is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario. She acquired her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto on Palestinian popular memory and reconstructions of identity in al-Baq’a refugee camp in Jordan. Dr. Farah was a research associate with CERMOC in Jordan, where she was involved in a comprehensive study on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). She is an associate researcher at the Refugee Studies Center at the University of Oxford involved in research projects on children and adolescents in Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee camps funded by the Mellon Foundation. Together with a lawyer, she taught a short course titled Palestinian Refugees and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recently, Farah has conducted a pilot project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in Canada, examining obstacles to repatriation in refugee cases, including refugees from Western Sahara and the Balkans. Her publications and lectures reflect her work in the areas of displacement and refugees, memory/history and identity, nations and nationalism, gender, humanitarian aid, and children and youth.
The course will take place at the American University in Cairo. Main Campus, Hill House Building, Sixth Floor Lounge. Between 9 am and 5 pm, every day.
See Below for application procedures.
Tuition
The tuition fee for each course is US $100 for international participants and LE 170 for Egyptians and Residents of Egypt. A limited number of tuition waivers are available for refugees upon request.
Application procedures
Please send your updated curriculum vitae and a letter of application stating:
a) Your Interest in the Summer School.
b) The course(s) you are applying for.
c) Why the course(s) is/are important to your work or academic interest.
d) State if you are applying for a tuition waiver, and why.
Addressed to:
Ms. Maysa Ayoub Email: [email protected]
Assistant to Director Tel: (202) 7976626
Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Fax (202) 7976629
American University in Cairo FMRS/AUC,
113 Kasr El Aini Street, PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511, Egypt
Deadline for applications is May 10th, 2005
For further information regarding accommodation in Cairo and further updates on FMRS up-coming events access: www.aucegypt.edu/fmrs (under Outreach).