1. Palestinian Refugees issues, instructed by Ms. Parastou Hassouri, an independent researcher and consultant, May 25 -28, 2025
2. The Right to Asylum: Legal Frameworks, Challenges and Encroachments, instructed by Ms. Parastou Hassouri, an independent researcher and consultant, June 15 – 19, 2025
3. Understanding International Migration Agreements, instructed by Dr. Kelsey P. Norman, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Refugees program, June 16–19, 2025
4. Health and Migration, instructed by Dr. Akram Ali Eltoum Mohamed, Sudan’s former Federal Minister of Health, June 29 – July 03, 2025
1. Eligibility for all courses
Requirements: The courses are offered for graduate and postgraduate students, researchers as well as practitioners working in migration related fields. A minimum knowledge of displacement and migration terminologies and context is a requirement for participation in any of the four courses.
All courses are offered face to face and will take place at AUC’ Tahrir campus. The language of instruction is English with no translation facilities. As such, applicants must have a strong command of the English language. Each course will run from 9.30 am until 4.30 pm (Cairo Local Time) with an hour break.
Interested applicants can apply for one course or for the four courses.
Number of Participants: minimum of 12 in each course.
2. Courses’ Descriptions
2.1. Palestinian Refugees Issues, May 25 – 28, 2025
This course will examine the issue of Palestinian refugees from an inter-disciplinary perspective, providing participants an opportunity to engage with the major practical and theoretical issues connected with the topic, and to critically assess the historical, political, legal, and ideological forces and the conceptual frameworks shaping the debate. The course will begin with a review of the historical events leading to the displacement of Palestinians, followed by an examination of the status of Palestinians in exile, especially in the Middle East/North Africa region. We will study the legal frameworks governing the refugee question, looking at key themes of statelessness, right to return, right to self-determination, and repatriation, among others. We will also discuss the failure of the international legal system to address the violations against Palestinians, explore potential solutions and consider the implications of the Palestinian refugee question for other protracted refugee situations.
2.2. The Right to Asylum: Legal Frameworks, Challenges and Encroachments, June 15 -19, 2025.
In this course, we will focus on the right to asylum, examining not only its legal foundations and the international frameworks supporting it, but also the ethical and other factors that shape the making of refugee and migration policy more broadly, from history and culture to political and economic factors. We will next turn to the encroachments on this right, exploring national and regional policies concentrating on issues such as border control, securitization and externalization, rising nationalism, and the construction of “migration crises.” The course will examine the issue globally, with a particular focus on the current political discourse and anti-migration policies in the United States and the European Union, and the impact of these policies on the right to seek asylum in the Global South, especially in the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. The course will be structured around discussions of academic literature, journalistic accounts, short films, and case studies.
About the Instructor:
Ms. Parastou Hassouri is an independent researcher and consultant focusing on refugee and migration law and policy. She has previously taught courses in international refugee law and on Palestinian refugees and international law at The American University in Cairo and has extensive experience in the field of international refugee law and immigrant rights and migration policy. Parastou has served as a consultant with different UNHCR operations and with NGOs, focusing on both research and advocacy. She previously worked as a Legal Advisor and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Focal Point at Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) in Cairo. Her experience in the United States includes serving as an Attorney Advisor at the Immigration Courts of New York City and Los Angeles. In addition, she directed the Immigrant Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, where she focused on responding to ethnic profiling and other forms of anti-immigrant backlash in the United States in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11. Parastou also occasionally writes on the topic of refugees and migration policy.
2.3. Understanding International Migration Agreement, June 16 -19, 2025.
This course will examine how and why do migration receiving, transit, and sending states, as well as international organizations, collaborate to regulate migration.
The last decade has seen a dizzying proliferation of bilateral and multilateral agreements on migration, especially in the Mediterranean space, and this course provides the analytical tools, empirical evidence, and critical thinking to understand the new (and old) ways that states are attempting to manage cross-border migration, in addition to the impact of such agreements for migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. The course will draw on global examples but will also hone in on the case study of the EU, North Africa, and Middle East in order to grasp key concepts and trends. By the end of the course, students will gain the ability to analyze international migration agreements and their impacts for states and individuals, and will be able to place recent developments in their historical and global context.
About the Instructor:
Dr. Kelsey P. Norman is a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Refugees Program. She also teaches courses on Middle East politics and the politics of migration and refugees in Rice University’s Master of Global Affairs program and the Department of Political Science. She has conducted extensive, empirically grounded research on refugees, migration, and state policy, reflected in her award-winning book “Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa,” published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. Her second book, “Aiding Autocrats: Migration Management, Governance, and Repression in Africa,” co-authored with Dr. Nicholas Micinski, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. Her research has also been published in numerous academic journals and in popular outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. In 2025, she was awarded the Emerging Scholar prize by the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration section of the International Studies Association. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine.
2.4. Health and Migration, June 29 – July 03, 2025.
Human migration is increasing and becoming more complex globally, with diverse populations involved in different types and phases of migration. These include refugees, asylum-seekers, trafficked and smuggled persons, internally-displaced persons (IDPs) as well as other people involved in irregular migration patterns. The origins and migration trajectories for most of these migrants have resulted in larger numbers of them residing in countries within the Global South, while others have come to reside in the Global North. Increasingly, human health is understood to be heavily influenced by distal socio-economic, environmental, political and technological determinants. These distal determinants, in turn, also influence the more proximal determinants of health such as access to care, health-seeking behavior, health care utilization and others. The diverse situations in which migrants find themselves are part of the distal determinants and can strongly influence the proximal ones. Examples of such influences include diminished access to legal rights, social services, housing, income and economic opportunities as well as more obvious factors such as persecution of and violence against migrants.
It is important to understand how the health of migrants is influenced by all these intersectional factors, as well as to appreciate how these influences change depending on numerous other elements such as the migrants’ origin and phase along their migration trajectory as well as the health situation in the host communities amongst which they reside. An important part of that learning process is to establish a conceptual framework that helps analyze health along, both, the migration trajectory as well as along the disease and health care continuum from surveillance, prevention, treatment, care and rehabilitation. Drawing upon existing evidence and literature as well as real-life case studies, this short-course aims to equip participants with analytical tools that better prepare them in navigating policy, practice or research that effectively address the health and migration nexus.
About the Instructor:
Dr. Akram Ali Eltoum Mohamed earned an MBBS (1985; Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, Sudan), an MPH (1993; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA) and a Fellowship by Distinction (2015; Faculty of Public Health, UK Royal College of Physicians), along with post-graduate training in Advanced Epidemiological Analysis, Leadership, Global Health Diplomacy, Project Development, Child and Adolescent Health, Rural Health Services Management, HIV and Advocacy. His profile brings over 35 years of experience in global health leadership, policy influence, operational research, strategic analysis, partnerships as well as program development and management; focused on health sector resilience, epidemic/pandemic risk management, humanitarian response, migration health, health systems strengthening, communicable & non-communicable disease control (including nutrition), primary health care (PHC) as well as sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (SRMNCAH).
He worked in various global, regional and country-level senior management and advisory roles across industrialized, middle-income, lower-income and fragile and states in WHO’s EMRO, EURO, AFRO, SEARO and WPRO regions. After several senior roles including as Global Fund’s Director of Partnerships and WHO Representative in Jordan, he served as WHO EMRO’s Senior Regional Consultant for HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs) when he also represented EMRO in WHO’s Global Validation Advisory Committee for elimination of maternal-to-child transmission of HIV, hepatitis and congenital syphilis (GVAC) and in Egypt’s National Hepatitis Technical Advisory Group (TAG) while. As Sudan’s former Federal Minister of Health, he was elected Africa CDC Board Member, WHO WHA Vice-Chair and Executive Board Member. Since August 2022, he was appointed as Expert Member in the two global WHO IHR Review Committees for COVID-19 and Mpox, WHO’s TAG for Validation of WHO Health Worker Training Course on Refugees and Migrants, WHO’s TAG on Health, Migration, and Displacement as well as in Gavi’s Independent Review Committee.
The deadline to apply and pay the full tuition of all courses is May 15, 2025.
1) Fee for international participants is $ 500 per course.
2) Fee for Egyptians and those residing in Egypt is EGP 5000 per course.
The course fee will cover all course material and two coffee breaks. Upon the successful completion of each course, each participant will receive a certificate of completion from CMRS/AUC
Partner Institutions who are in a position to send 5 or more of their staff to attend one or all of the courses will be offered a reduced fee for each staff member for each course. Students and researchers who are currently unemployed can apply for a reduced fee. Applicants who are aiming for a reduced fee must write a request to cmrscourses@aucegypt.edu after submitting their applications
4. Application Information:
· The application form can be accessed through the following link.
· https://forms.gle/
· Applicants may apply to and be accepted in all courses.
For any problem with the application, please contact cmrscourses@aucegypt.