December 2019

The Asia-Pacific Research Group of the Kaldor Centre’s Emerging Scholars Network unites graduates and early career scholars undertaking research on refugees and forced migration in the Asia-Pacific. It allows scholars to share ideas across disciplines and institutions, and provides a platform for disseminating new research, both within the region and internationally.

This ‘Year in Review’ newsletter highlights just a few of these scholars’ academic achievements from 2019. They include international conference, seminar and workshop presentations; fieldwork and doctoral research; and a range of publications, from blogs and podcasts, to book chapters and peer-reviewed academic journals. Further information about these scholars and the network is available at https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/emerging-scholars-network/asia-pacific.

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Emerging Scholars Network

Asia Pacific Research Group

YEAR IN REVIEW

JOIN OUR NETWORK All early-career scholars undertaking research on refugees and forced migration in the Asia-Pacific region are invited to apply to join the Asia Pacific Research Group, within the broader Emerging Scholars Network. Scholars from or based at universities and research institutions in the region are particularly encouraged to apply. More established scholars are also welcome.

December 2019

Ashraful Azad PhD Candidate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney In 2019, Ashraf conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh and presented his research extensively. He participated in the National Workshop on Comparative Experiences of Statelessness, Migration and Protection at Independent University Bangladesh, was an invited speaker at the UNSW ASEAN Conference for the session on ‘Migrant Workers in ASEAN: Ending discrimination and exploitation’, participated in the Migration, Refugees and Statelessness Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Melbourne, and attended the Statelessness & Citizenship Doctoral Workshop at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School.

He published on the situation of the Rohingya in Bangladesh in a special issue on ‘the refugee challenge’ published by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a blog piece for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter.

Brian Barbour PhD Candidate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

2019 was the first year of Brian’s PhD, in which he looks at the development of asylum systems in Asia, with a particular look at the protection provided by non-state actors.

In addition to presenting at the annual Emerging Scholars Network workshop, Brian participated in a number of academic and professional conferences, workshops, and roundtables, including as a speaker at an ‘Expert Regional Consultation on the Protective Frameworks for Rohingya Refugees in South and Southeast Asia’ in Malaysia comparing findings on the existing protection frameworks available in six major host countries for Rohingya in Asia, and as a discussant at the

2019 Gwangju Asia Forum in Korea on ‘Massacres and Refugees – State Violence and the Responsibility to Protect’ (remarks published here).

He organised a series of workshops, including the Bangladesh National Workshop of Legal Practitioners on Comparative Experiences of Migration, Statelessness and Protection in Dhaka in June, and the South Asia Regional Legal Practitioner’s Roundtable in Bangkok in December, with a particular focus on protection for the Rohingya and the strategic response to the National Register of Citizens in India. Finally, Brian engaged with the refugee sector in a number of ways: he prepared a comparative analysis of the existing legal frameworks of six countries in Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia) and their applicability to Rohingya refugees for the Refugee Solidarity Network and Open Society Justice Initiative, provided commentary on draft regulations prepared by the Thai Government on the establishment of a new ‘Screening Mechanism’, provided pro bono legal advice to the Taiwan Association for Human Rights on an asylum case under a newly established regulation under the ICCPR, and participated in regular meetings organised by UNHCR around ‘Protection Capacity’ doing preparatory work for the Global Refugee Forum in December.

Rachel D’silva PhD Candidate, Central University of Gujarat

Rachel published an article titled ‘Reflections on Narratives of Flight of Rohingyas in India’ in the Café Dissensus magazine issue on ‘Rohingya Refugees: Identity, Citizenship and Human Rights’.

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December 2019

Madeline Gleeson Senior Research Associate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

Madeline convenes the Asia Pacific research group of the Emerging Scholars Network. In 2019, her research focused on extraterritorial jurisdiction, offshore processing of asylum seekers in the Pacific, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. She published an article in the International Journal of Refugee Law entitled ‘Protection Deficit: The Failure of Australia’s Offshore Processing Arrangements to Guarantee ‘Protection Elsewhere’ in the Pacific’, and an article in the Australian Journal of Human Rights entitled ‘Monitoring places of immigration detention in Australia under OPCAT’.

Carly Gordyn PhD Candidate, Australian National University

Carly won the Ruth Daroesman Study Grant and was a visiting fellow at the Habibie Centre in Jakarta. She presented at the Refugee Law Initiative’s 4th Annual Conference on ‘Rethinking the “Regional” in Refugee Law and Policy?’ and at its postgraduate workshop, at the Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Migration Research: PhD Research Colloquium at the University of Essex, and at the Indonesian Council Open Conference. She also wrote an op-ed for LexisNexis’ Advancing Together: Rule of Law Updates and Perspectives from the Asia Pacific bulletin, asking ‘Is the international refugee regime legitimate in Southeast Asia?’.

Felicity Gray PhD Candidate, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

Felicity was doing fieldwork for most of 2019, studying unarmed forms of protecting civilians from violence, including how communities themselves undertake this work. This study has included research with internally displaced populations in Myanmar and South Sudan.

Tristan Harley PhD Candidate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

In March, Tristan presented a paper (with Harry Hobbs as co-author) on ‘Refugee Participation, Decision-Making and the Right to be Heard’ at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre Conference on ‘Democratizing Displacement’ (podcast available here), and in April he participated at the Annual Conference of the International Council of Volunteer Agencies (ICVA) in Geneva. He published a research paper as part of the World Refugee Council Research Paper Series entitled Innovations in Responsibility Sharing for Refugees, and led the drafting process of a discussion paper for the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network and the Asia Pacific Network of Refugees on ‘Supporting the

Meaningful Participation and Leadership of Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities within a “Whole of Society” Approach’. Finally, in the October-December 2019 issue of Australian Quarterly, Tristan published an article entitled ‘Global Compact on Refugees: Opportunities for Australian reform and leadership?’.

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December 2019

Sophie Henderson PhD Candidate, University of Auckland

Sophie presented her research at the Global Carework Summit in Toronto, Canada and at the Sixth International Conference on Gender and Women's Studies in Malaysia, as well as at several postgraduate workshops in New Zealand. She published an article in Violence Against Women entitled ‘State-Sanctioned Structural Violence: Women Migrant Domestic Workers in the Philippines and Sri Lanka’. She also recently submitted her doctoral thesis in the area of international migration law, entitled ‘The Legal Protection of Women Migrant Domestic Workers: A Comparative Analysis of the Philippines and Sri Lanka’.

Asher Hirsch PhD Candidate, Monash University; Senior Policy Officer, Refugee Council of Australia

Asher published two new articles this year, one on extraterritorial migration controls in Indonesia and Libya, and another on Australia’s Private Refugee Sponsorship Program.

Sandy Sandhya Jackson PhD Candidate, School of Law, University of Sydney

Sandy is currently in the final few months of completing her PhD. Her research examines how the Australian refugee advocacy movement creates legal and social change for children in immigration detention. Her thesis involves socio-legal research and is based on 41 interviews with refugee advocacy groups, activists, lawyers, migration agents, doctors, politicians, journalists, senior bureaucrats and policy advisors. In July, she presented a paper at the Children, Migration and Right to Health Conference at the University of Sydney.

Nursyazwani Jamaludin Research Associate, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies - Yusof Ishak Institute

Wani has just completed her Masters thesis with the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, based on her fieldwork research in Klang Valley Malaysia between early 2017 to late 2018. The title of her thesis is ‘Assembling the Legible Refugee: A Case Study of Rohingyas in Klang Valley, Malaysia’. She is currently a Research Collaborator in an ongoing ISEAS-funded research project titled ‘Schooling for Rohingya Children in Johor Bahru’.

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December 2019

Emilie McDonnell DPhil in Law Candidate, University of Oxford

Emilie spent her summer undertaking a rewarding, intensive internship with the Department of Legal Affairs at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in East Jerusalem. It provided her with an invaluable opportunity to gain practical legal experience at a UN Agency, doing individual case work, undertaking case-led and general research, working on Agency messaging and advocacy on protection and international law issues, and assisting with engagement with human rights mechanisms. She published an article in the Dhaka Law Review in Bangladesh on visa regimes and the right to leave any country, based on her current research. She is now back in Oxford continuing her DPhil in Law and doing some teaching for the faculty.

Liam Moore PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong

Liam published two articles this year: one entitled ‘Choosing to stay or go: Why we shouldn’t assume that climate-related migration is inevitable’; and another entitled ‘Planning for the Worst: The Normative Significance of Fiji’s Planned Relocation Guidelines for the Protection and Rights of Climate IDPs in the Pacific’. Liam also presented at the Emerging Scholars Network Workshop at UNSW Sydney in November.

Dolewaththa Gamage Niruka Sanjeewani Lecturer, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University

D.G. Niruka Sanjeewani presented a paper on ‘Regional integration in South East Asia: ASEAN and its future implications’ at the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies’ 2019 conference on ‘Power in Southeast Asia’, a paper on ‘Going beyond the discourses on Common European Asylum System’ at the Rajarata International Research Conference at the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, and a paper on ‘Rohingya refugees in Nepal: going beyond the discourse on integration’ at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University’s 12th international research conference. Additionally, she completed the 2019 Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network’s South Asia Short Course on Refugee Rights and Advocacy in Nepal.

Jay Ramasubramanyam PhD Candidate and instructor, Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University

Jay is the recipient of the 2018-2019 Toronto Dominion Graduate Fellowship in Migration and Diaspora Studies and the recipient of the 2019 Canada-India Centre for Excellence’s Kanta Marwah Research Grant in Peace and Security.

He is currently working on two co-authored book chapters in the upcoming Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (Eds.: Cathryn Costello, Michelle Foster, Jane McAdam) namely, The Role of UNHCR and Regional Refugee Regimes: South Asia. He also participated in a symposium in Seoul, South Korea organised by the Development of International Law in Asia – Korea, to present a draft journal article entitled Subcontinental Defiance to the Global Refugee Regime: Global Leadership or Regional Exceptionalism.

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December 2019

Kieren Salazar Pforzheimer Public Service Fellow, Harvard University

Kieren has relocated to Indonesia where he is working to set up a writers’ group, with 40 writers between Jakarta and Bogor. The writers’ group website should be ready to launch by early 2020 and they should be a prominent part of the programming at both the Ubud and Makassar Writers Festivals in 2020. Kieren is also involved in establishing a mental health pilot project to provide group therapy and skills training to asylum seekers and refugees from 2020.

Matthew Seet Lecturer, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore

Matthew teaches International Refugee Law and the Law and Politics of Forced Migration, as well as Evidence, at the National University of Singapore. He recently published an op-ed in The Straits Times entitled ‘Rethinking the deprivation of citizenship’, regarding the citizenship deprivation of terrorist suspects or fighters.

Dr Richa Shivakoti Research Officer, Carleton University

In 2019, Richa moved to Toronto after completing her post-doctoral research at the Maastricht School of Governance in the Netherlands. She has since worked as a migration policy consultant at the International Organization of Migration. She has supported the creation of a global database and the first global report on ‘Migration Governance Indicators: A global perspective’, which should be published soon. She is also writing a policy brief and policy blog on the Sustainable Development Goals 10.7.2, which focuses on migration. Since September 2019, Richa has been working as a Research Officer at Carleton University studying research capacity and challenges for researchers working on forced migration and displacement issues in the Global South.

She has published articles entitled ‘When Disaster hits Home: A look at Nepali migrants response to the 2015 Earthquake’ in the Migration and Development Journal, and ‘Governing International Regime Complexes through Multi-level Governance Mechanisms: Lessons from water, forestry and migration policy’ in the International Journal of Water Resources Development. She also recently published a book review of Myanmar’s ‘Rohingya’ Conflict in The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. Richa presented papers at the International Conference of Public Policy in Montreal and at the Global Carework Summit in Toronto last summer.

Teresa Soares Masters student, University of Mahidol

Teresa has been completing final revisions prior to submitting her thesis and preparing the research proposal for her next project which will be on forced migration in Myanmar.

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December 2019

Natasha Yacoub PhD Candidate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

In 2019, Natasha presented at the Refugee Law Initiative Conference in London on ‘Re-thinking the history of refugee protection in Southeast Asia’, and at a seminar at Monash University’s Modern Slavery Clinic on 'Culture of International Humanitarian Organisations’. She also published a chapter (with Lisa Schwartz and Kevin Bezanson) on ‘Legal and Ethical Considerations of Palliative Care Provision in Humanitarian Crises’ in Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises (Oxford University Press, 2019).

SELECT LIST OF PUBLICATIONS FROM THE ASIA PACIFIC RESEARCH GROUP IN 2019

• Ashraful Azad (with R Hoque), ‘Rohingya refugees face hardships in Bangladesh’ in D+C Development and Cooperation special issue on ‘the refugee challenge’, published by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (2019).

• Ashraful Azad, ‘Stalemate leaves Rohingya refugees trapped’, Lowy Interpreter (27 September 2019).

• Rachel D’Silva, ‘Reflections on Narratives of Flight of Rohingyas in India’ (2019) 51 Café Dissensus.

• Madeline Gleeson, ‘Monitoring places of immigration detention in Australia under OPCAT’ (2019) 25(1) Australian Journal of Human Rights 150.

• Madeline Gleeson, ‘Protection Deficit: The Failure of Australia’s Offshore Processing Arrangements to Guarantee ‘Protection Elsewhere’ in the Pacific’ (2019) International Journal of Refugee Law.

• Carly Gordyn, ‘Is the international refugee regime legitimate in Southeast Asia?’ (2019) 8(1) Advancing Together 13.

• Tristan Harley, Innovations in Responsibility Sharing for Refugees (World Refugee Council Research Paper No. 14 — May 2019).

• Tristan Harley,‘Global Compact on Refugees: Opportunities for Australian reform and leadership?’ Australian Quarterly (Issue 4, Oct-Dec 2019).

• Sophie Henderson, ’State-Sanctioned Structural Violence: Women Migrant Domestic Workers in the Philippines and Sri Lanka’ (2019) Violence Against Women.

• Asher Hirsch (with Khanh Hoang & Anthea Vogl), ‘Australia’s Private Refugee Sponsorship Program: Creating Complementary Pathways Or Privatising Humanitarianism?‘ (2019) 35(2) Refuge 109.

• Asher Hirsch (with Azadeh Dastyari), ‘The Ring of Steel: Extraterritorial Migration Controls in Indonesia and Libya and the Complicity of Australia and Italy’ (2019) Human Rights Law Review.

• Emilie McDonnell, ‘Australia’s Visa Regime and the Right to Leave Any Country: Fostering Irregular Migration and Harm’, Dhaka Law Review (September 2019).

• Liam Moore, ‘Choosing to stay or go: Why we shouldn’t assume that climate-related migration is inevitable’, Routed Magazine (15 June 2019).

• Liam Moore, ‘Planning for the Worst: The Normative Significance of Fiji’s Planned Relocation Guidelines for the Protection and Rights of Climate IDPs in the Pacific’, Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration (21 August 2019).

• Richa Shivakoti, ‘When Disaster hits Home: A look at Nepali migrants response to the 2015 Earthquake’ (2019) 8(3) Migration and Development Journal 338.

• Richa Shivakoti (with others),‘Governing International Regime Complexes through Multi-level Governance Mechanisms: Lessons from water, forestry and migration policy’ (2019) International Journal of Water Resources Development.

• Matthew Seet, ‘Rethinking the deprivation of citizenship’, The Straits Times (1 March 2019) 23.

• Natasha Yacoub (with Lisa Schwartz and Kevin Bezanson), book chapter on ‘Legal and Ethical Considerations of Palliative Care Provision in Humanitarian Crises’ in Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises (Oxford University Press, 2019).

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SCHOLARS

41

COUNTRIES

17

INSTITUTIONS

33

ASIA PACIFIC

RESEARCH GROUP