Roundtable meetings: Refugee Convention, Refugee in Egypt.

The IALIIS hosted Prof. Barbar Harrell-Bond Oxford University, and Oroub El-Abed-SOASUniversity, to run a roundtable meeting covering the case of Refugees in Egypt and Refugee Convention.   

Prof. Harrell explained the two ways in which refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention can be ended. The first is in a refugee re-avails him or herself of the protection of his country of origin; the second is when refugees of a particular nationality are deemed no longer in need of international protection because of the 'ceased circumstances’ in their country of origin.

She highlighted that since 1996 the Rwandan government has been pursuing their citizens who have sought asylum outside the country. Uganda and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee have been notorious for cooperating with Rwanda. There have been several incidents for 'forced’ or involuntary repatriation, in July 2010, In the meantime, more Rwandans, including genocide survivors are seeking asylum in Uganda. This came after Prof. Harrell gave an introduction about the Rwandan- Ugandan conflict. 

Oroub El-Abed talked about the status of Palestinian refugees in Egypt before and after the eras of president Jamal Abd El-Nasser and president Anwar al-Sadat. She presented her discourse on theEmpathy for Palestinians with Egyptian Travel Documents, asserted that the Palestinians holders of Egyptian travel documents from Gaza who sought refuge in Jordan as a result of the 1967 war, were unable to enter Egypt and had to remain in Jordan, with constrained rights and in limbostatus. After the Gulf war 1991, many Palestinians working in the Gulf with Egyptian TD failed to find a country to let them in. Egypt was the first to deny them access to its territories. The same happened to the 30.000 Palestinians who had been expelled from Lybia by Al-Qathafi in 1995, and prevented from getting in to Egypt.