Online Conference: Cross Border Portability of Refugees’ Personal and Family Status – A Plea for Better Interplay Between Private International Law and Migration Law

You are kindly invited to the online conference on “Cross-border portability of refugees’ personal and family status – a plea for better interplay between private international law and migration law” by Prof. Dr. Jinske Verhellen on March 16, 2022, Wednesday between 12.30-13.30 (GMT+3). The conference is organized by Bilkent University as a part of the Talks on Migration Series within the Jean Monnet Module on European and International Migration Law. It will be held via zoom, free of charge. Please contact us (Jmmigration@bilkent.edu.tr) for participation.

Biography:
Jinske Verhellen is a Professor of Private International Law and Head of the Institute for Private International Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University (Belgium). She is a member of the Ghent University Interfaculty Research Group CESSMIR (Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees) and of the Ghent University Human Rights Research Network. She has published on various aspects of private international law, international family law, migration law, and nationality law.
Abstract:
The lecture will address several legal problems encountered by refugees with regard to their personal and family status acquired in one country and transferred to another country (such as the absence of documentary evidence, the issue of limping legal relationships). It will focus on the interactions between international refugee law (relating to the rights and obligations of States regarding the protection of refugees) and private international law (dealing with private relationships in a cross-border context). These two sets of rules still operate in very different and even separated universes. The following issues will be covered: specific private international law hurdles that refugees have to take, the concept of personal status (age, parental status, marital status) in international refugee law, and the role of private international law conventions in the international protection of refugees.