No Asylum for ‘Infiltrators’: The Legal Predicament of Eritrean and Sudanese Nationals in Israel
The Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law welcomes Dr. Reuven Ziegler, who will discuss the precarious status of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals in Israel and the regularisation of asylum in Israel.
Refreshments will be provided. RSVP to oppenheimer [at] mcgill [dot] ca.
Abstract
This talk explores the precarious status of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals in Israel. Having crossed the Israeli-Egyptian border without authorisation and not through an official border crossing, Israeli law defines such individuals as ‘infiltrators’, a charged term which dates back to border-crossings into Israel by Palestinian Fedayeen in the 1950s. Eritreans and Sudanese nationals constitute over 90 percent of ‘infiltrators’ in Israel. Their livelihood is curtailed through hostility, sanctions and detention, while Israel refrains from deporting them to their respective countries of origin, recognising that such forced removal could expose them to risks to their lives and/or freedom. The talk argues that the regularisation of asylum in Israel, including legal recognition of ‘refugee’, ‘asylum-seeker’, and ‘beneficiary of subsidiary protection’ statuses, is long due.
About the speaker
Dr Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler is lecturer in law at the University of Reading School of Law, where he is a member of the Global Law at Reading (GLAR) research group (specialising in human rights, international humanitarian law and international refugee law). He is Editor-in-Chief, Working Paper Series, Refugee Law Initiative (Institute for Advance Legal Study, University of London). He is a Research Associate of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, and an Academic visitor at its Faculty of Law. He is also a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute (analysing the treatment of African asylum seekers in Israel as part of the Constitutional Principles project). Previously, he was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School (affiliated with its Immigration and Refugee Clinic and with the Human Rights Program), a Tutor in Public International Law at the University of Oxford, and a legal advising officer at the Israel Defence Forces' Legal Counselor's Office (mandatory military service). He holds DPhil, MPhil, and BCL degrees from the University of Oxford; LLM with specialisation in Public Law from Hebrew University; and a joint LLB and BA from the University of Haifa.
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