Invitation: Brown Bag Lunch Lecture on Voting Rights of Refugees

  • DATE

    18 February 2020

  • TIME

    12:00 - 13:30

  • VENUE

    Room 2-2.1, Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria Main (Hatfield) Campus

The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, cordially invites you to a Brown Bag Lunch Lecture on Voting Rights of Refugees by distinguished international refugee law scholar, Dr Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler.

Date: Tuesday 18 February 2020
Time: 12:00 – 13:30 
Venue: Room 2-2.1, Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria Main (Hatfield) Campus
RSVP / Enquiries: Dr Romola Adeola ([email protected])

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Background

Voting Rights of Refugees develops a novel legal argument about the voting rights of refugees recognised in the 1951 Geneva Convention. The main normative contention is that such refugees should have the right to vote in the political community where they reside, assuming that this community is a democracy and that its citizens have the right to vote. Dr Ziegler argues that recognised refugees are a special category of noncitizen residents: they are ordinarily unable to participate in elections of their state of origin, do not enjoy its diplomatic protection and consular assistance abroad, and are unable or unwilling, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, to return to it. Refugees deserve to have a place in the world, in the Arendtian sense, where their opinions are significant and their actions are effective. Their state of asylum is the only community in which there is any prospect of political participation on their part.

Dr Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler is Associate Professor in International Refugee Law at the University of Reading, School of Law, where he is the Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes. Ruvi is an Associate Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple; Research Associate of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford; Co-convenor of the Migration and Asylum Section of the Society of Legal Scholars; Senior Research Associate of the Refugee Law Initiative (Institute for Advance Legal Study, University of London) and Editor-in-Chief of its Working Paper Series. Ruvi’s public engagements include serving as Chair of the Board of Trustees of New Europeans Association UK; Chair of the Oxford European Association; A Britain in Europe academic expert; and an advisory council member of Rene Cassin. Previously, Ruvi was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic and with the Human Rights Program; and a Tutor in Public International Law at Oxford. Ruvi’s recently published book is Voting Rights of Refugees (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Ruvi’s areas of research interest include international refugee law, electoral rights and citizenship, comparative constitutional law, and international humanitarian law. Ruvi holds DPhil, MPhil, and BCL degrees from the University of Oxford. 

For more information and a list of publications: www.reading.ac.uk/law/about/staff/r-ziegler.aspx 

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