The REF-ARAB Project - Team - Martin Jones
Martin Jones is a senior lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. Before his academic positions, Martin practiced refugee law in Vancouver. He continues to work closely with legal practitioners, particularly providers of refugee legal aid in the Global South. He was a founding member and chair of the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network and the founding chair of the Legal Aid Working Group of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network.
Martin has consulted to refugee legal aid organisations and externally evaluated programmes of refugee legal aid operating in a number of states in the Middle East and Asia. Martin is a co-founder and the vice-chairman of the Egyptian Foundation for Refugee Rights, the largest provider of legal aid to refugees in Egypt.
Martin also works closely with human rights defenders at risk. Since 2015, he has worked closely with the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, facilitating consultations with human rights defenders and supporting his thematic reports to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly. Since April 2018, Martin has been seconded to the OHCHR to help support the UN Special Rapporteur’s upcoming report to the UN General Assembly to mark the 20th anniversary of the watershed Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
On REF-ARAB, Martin will explore questions related to the nature of professional practice of lawyers in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt:
(i) How does the legal profession view its role in the protection of refugees?
(ii) How and why do lawyers become active in refugee protection?
(iii) How do lawyers organise themselves to provide refugee legal aid?
(iv) How is the provision of refugee legal aid affected by the shrinking of civil society space?
He will also examine doctrinal law:
(v) What arguments do lawyers make for refugee protection?
(vi) How are these arguments developed, formally raised, and received?
(vii) How does the (lack of) rule of law affect these arguments and their success?
Local legal practices and their relation to the international refugee regime are also explored:
(viii) What is the relationship between local lawyers and other actors of the international refugee regime, notably UNHCR?
(ix) What is the relationship between the arguments raised by lawyers and the international refugee regime?