Making the Global Compacts Work: What future for refugees and migrants?
Will migrants and refugees move in a safer, better managed international system thanks to two Global Compacts now under negotiation? To examine this question, the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and the New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, are releasing "Making the Global Compacts Work: What future for refugees and migrants?"
Please join us on 23 April in New York for a special lunchtime conversation to launch this latest in the Kaldor Centre’s milestone Policy Brief series, which brings legal academic rigour to practical contemporary policy questions.
Making the Global Compacts Work: What future for refugees and migrants? dissects the fast-changing, complex agreements, which mark a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address profound displacement challenges. In 2016, United Nations member states adopted the New York Declaration, committing to real improvements for millions of people on the move globally. This effort will culminate in a Global Compact on Refugees, and a Global Compact on Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration. Negotiations are now under way to determine what these international agreements will include.
Renowned international refugee law scholar and Kaldor Centre Acting Director Guy S Goodwin-Gill will lead a frank discussion with the Policy Brief co-authors, Zolberg Institute Director Professor T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Georgetown University Professor Emeritus Susan Martin, at a special lunchtime event hosted by Open Society Foundations.
About the Speakers:
T. Alexander Aleinikoff is University Professor and Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School. Prof. Aleinikoff has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. He is currently at work on a book tentatively titled, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (with Leah Zamore). His book Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship was published by Harvard University Press in 2002. He is a co-author of leading legal casebooks on immigration law and forced migration. Professor Aleinikoff served as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees (2010-15) and was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he also served as Dean and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University. He was co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for President Barack Obama's transition team in 2008. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then executive associate commissioner for programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Professor Aleinikoff taught at the University of Michigan Law School from 1981 to 1997. He received a J.D. from the Yale Law School and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts of Sciences in 2014.
Guy S Goodwin Gill is Professor of Law at UNSW and Acting Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. He is also Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law of the University of Oxford, and practises as a barrister from Blackstone Chambers in London. He has held academic appointments in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands, and has been a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and the European University Institute in Florence. He has published widely in the areas of international refugee law, human rights law and humanitarian law, child soldiers, and free and fair elections. Professor Goodwin-Gill is a Patron of Asylum Aid in the United Kingdom, was the President of Refugee & Migrant Justice (London) for 13 years, President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000–03, and the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law (1988–2001). Between 1976–88, he worked for UNHCR in various roles, including as Senior Legal Research Officer, Legal Adviser (Europe and North America Bureau), Deputy Chief Resettlement, and Legal Adviser (Australia and New Zealand). He obtained his BA (Honours), MA and doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Susan Martin is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie New Jersey Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass Residential College, Rutgers University. She previously served as the Director of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. She currently chairs the Thematic Working Group on Environmental Change and Migration for the Knowledge Partnership in Migration and Development (KNOMAD) at the World Bank. Before coming to Georgetown, Dr. Martin served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, established by legislation to advise Congress and the President on U.S. immigration and refugee policy. Previous to this service, she was Director of Research and Policy Studies at the Refugee Policy Group and Research Director at the US Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. Her most recent book publications include International Migration: Evolving Trends from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present; Migration and Humanitarian Crises: Causes, Consequences and Responses; and A Nation of Immigrants. Dr. Martin received her BA in History from Douglass College and her MA and PhD in the History of American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.