Refugee Dignity in Protracted Exile: Rights, Capabilities and Legal Empowerment
Channel: refugeeresearch
Date: 2020-02-03

The Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS)  held a seminar on January 28, 2020 with guest speaker Dr. Anna Purkey. 



This presentation focuses on Dr. Purkey’s book by the same title (Routledge, December 2019). The world today faces the prospect of larger and more protracted refugee situations than at any time in recent history. The challenge this presents requires a re-examination of the relationship of responsi-bility and obligation between refugees, aid providers and host states. The research presented here investigates the role that legal empowerment can play in changing the distribution of power in refu-gee situations and in helping to secure effective human rights and the inherent dignity of refugees in situations of protracted exile and encampment. Applying an original interdisciplinary theoretical framework that combines the capabilities approach with the fiduciary theory of public legal authority, this talk will touch upon questions relating to law, power, governance, responsibility, and accounta-bility in refugee camps.


Anna Purkey is a lawyer, Senior Research Associate and Summer Course Director at CRS. Her research focuses on international refugee law and international human rights law with a special emphasis on protracted refugee situations and themes of human capabilities, legal empowerment, human dignity, governance, and transitional justice.