Refugees and the Law in the Covid-19 Era

The UN Refugee Agency has reported that the world is currently experiencing the highest levels of displacement on record.  Of the 80 million people displaced from their homes, approximately 30 million are refugees or asylum seekers.  The public health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have severely exacerbated the challenges faced by these groups.  Join the Harvard European Law Association for this Zoom event to learn more about how Covid-19 and governmental responses to the pandemic in Europe have affected refugees and asylum seekers.

Our speakers are Prof. Jacqueline Bhabha, Prof. Iris Goldner Lang and Bella Mosselmans. Prof. Jaqueline Bhabha is the Director of Research at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001, she directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to that, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Prof. Bhabha also serves on the board of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She was a founder of the Alba Collective, an international women’s NGO currently working with rural women and girls in developing countries to enhance financial security and youth rights. She has published extensively on issues of refugee protection and transnational child migration.

Prof. Iris Goldner Lang is a Jean Monnet professor of European Union Law and a UNESCO Chairholder at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law (UNESCO Chair on Free Movement of People, Migration and Inter-Cultural Dialogue). She is the Vice-Dean for International and Interinstitutional Cooperation and the Head of the EU Law Department at the Faculty of Law. In 2015/2016 she was a Visiting Professor and a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School. She coordinates a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence and she has been the leader of the Jean Monnet Module “EU Migration Law and Policy”, granted by the European Commission. Prof. Goldner Lang is a partner in the 4-year project on “Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (AFAR)”, awarded by the Volkswagen Foundation. She is the president of the Croatian Society for European Law and the Croatian representative in the Odysseus Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe.  She has edited and published extensively in the area of migration law and EU free movement law.

Bella Mosselmans has worked as a human rights and asylum lawyer at Safe Passage International, an NGO helping unaccompanied child refugees and vulnerable adults to find safe routes to sanctuary. She is also the Joint-CEO and co-founder of the UK NGO ‘Here for Good’, which provides free immigration advice to the most in-need European citizens and their family members in the UK post-Brexit. Bella was named as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30’s for social entrepreneurship in 2020, in recognition of her work with Here For Good.  Bella is currently a Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar at Harvard Law School, in the LLM program.

The discussion will take place on Friday, 15 October 2021, 12:30 PM (EST). Register here for the zoom link.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing further information about joining the meeting.