In partnership with the Refugee-Led Research Hub (RLRH) at the University of Oxford, PILnet is pleased to welcome our latest Refugee Legal Fellow, Mariam Dirdiri. Mariam joins us as part of a joint PILnet-Refugee Led Research Hub Fellowship program launched in 2023, through which we welcomed Lidya Tewelde and Salah Jawish. The program is designed to give legal advocates with lived experience of displacement an opportunity to contribute to the PILnet’s work utilizing the law and engage its global legal network to advance access to rights, justice, and solutions for forcibly displaced people.
Getting to Know Mariam Dirdir
Mariam Dirdiri is a law graduate from Sudan, currently based in Cairo, pursuing an MSc in Environmental and Climate Law at University College Dublin. Mariam will be working on expanding and updating the research undertaken by Lidya on the legal needs of refugee-led organizations (RLOs), including drawing on data from 5 years of our Global Refugee Forum (GRF) Legal Community Matching Portal, and bringing in new perspectives from RLOs and allies in regions that were underrepresented in earlier research. To get to know Mariam, we asked her a few questions about the placement and her future plans:
What are you most looking forward to learning through this fellowship?
I hope to develop expertise in human rights and nonprofit law, with a particular interest in the intersection of environmental law and forced displacement. I am also keen to explore public interest law, including opportunities to engage in policy development and broader NGO work.
What skills are you keen to develop during your time at PILnet as a legal fellow?
Participatory research methods that center community expertise, and legal writing that balances evidence-based analysis with lived experience perspectives.
What are some of the research interests you’ll explore through this fellowship?
As a displaced person navigating legal systems, I’m interested in why RLOs struggle to survive legally even where laws supposedly protect them. Building on Lidya’s foundational research, I want to examine how the Refugee Convention and other international treaties actually operate (or fail) for RLOs in practice.
What are your plans for after the fellowship?
I’m pursuing a career combining policy work with academic research, focused on displacement and environmental justice. This fellowship is a stepping stone toward doctoral study and eventually judiciary service in post-conflict Sudan.
The PILnet-Refugee Led Research Hub Legal Fellowship Program.
The PILnet-RLRH Fellowship program draws upon PILnet’s long history of hosting public interest legal fellows and RLRH’s model for academic pathways to leadership for refugee scholars through their Professional Pathways Programme. It seeks to provide experiential and structured learning and leadership opportunities for entry-to-mid level legal advocates and to support onward career pathways in the legal, non-profit, and academic sectors for people with lived experience of displacement.
Alongside gaining hands-on experience in a public interest law organization, previous fellows Lidya Tewelde and Salah Jawish have helped shape PILnet’s work at the intersection of access to justice and meaningful refugee participation. This has included research on the legal needs of RLOs, providing input on the drafting of the 2023 GRF Legal Community Pledge Framework, supporting PILnet’s pro bono matching activities with RLOs, developing a conference paper for the Refugee Law Initiatives 2023 Annual Conference, and sharing their research at sessions at the 2023 PILnet Global Forum and the 2023 Global Refugee Forum.
The RLRH Professional Placements Programme
In furtherance of our commitments under the Global Refugee Forum Meaningful Refugee Participation Pledge to support displaced people to study and advance their careers in law, we are partnering with RLRH to raise awareness about their Professional Placements Programme and to encourage Pledge members and the wider PILnet network to consider hosting their own refugee scholar. Placements can be in-person or online and would involve hosting individuals affected by forced displacement, whether as current or former refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, or internally displaced people, for a minimum of four months.
This is an excellent opportunity for members of the legal community to advance meaningful refugee participation in access to justice. RLRH welcomes host organisations that are able to provide stipends, but they also have a limited number of funded placements available. If you are interested in learning more about either program, please contact Jasmine Simperigham, Program Director for Forced Displacement, at [email protected].