The REF-ARAB Project - Team - Charlotte Lysa
Charlotte Lysa is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo. She holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the Institute of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. Lysa was an intern at the Norwegian embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2014, and has been a visiting researcher at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and Qatar University.
Her research in the REF-ARAB project will focus on the historical relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UNHCR, and in particular the case of the Rafha refugee camp. The Rafha camp was set up during the first Gulf War, and sheltered approximately 33 000 Iraqi refugees. The guiding research question for the study is:
Why is Saudi Arabia not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and how does UNHCR carry out its mandate in the country?
In addition, four sub-questions will be explored:
(i) How and why did UNHCR establish its presence in Saudi Arabia in 1993?
(ii) What were the features of the Rafha camp, and how was the camp managed?
(iii) What was the difference in legal status between Iraqi refugees and other contemporary refugee groups, and what explains this discrepancy?
(iv) How does the question of refugees relate to broader policies on immigration in Saudi Arabia?