Essex refugee expert named senior advisor at UNHCR

The University of Essex’s Professor Geoff Gilbert has been appointed a senior advisor at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in recognition of his outstanding research and work on forcibly displaced people.

Professor Gilbert, of Essex Law School, has joined the team in the Protection Policy & Legal Advice (PPLA) Section in the Division of International Protection in UNHCR.

The position, which is equivalent to that of a thematic Special Procedure Mandate Holder, will see Professor Gilbert offering underpinning scholarship for UNHCR’s protection policies and legal analysis.

The role means he will retain his academic independence and have the scope to carry out broad research for PPLA that cuts across different sections and even divisions within UNHCR.

Professor Gilbert said: “As UNHCR enters its 75th year and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees approaches 75 years old.

“I am part of the planning and revitalisation process for UNHCR’s continuing relevance to global peace and security and the international protection of persons who face persecution, conflict and human rights violations.

“At a time when there are over 122 million people within UNHCR’s mandate, more than one per-cent of the world’s population, having someone embedded in the team but who brings an external voice to the conversation, was seen as a benefit to its projects, the organization and to the people whom it is mandated to protect.”

One aspect of the role can be seen in the ‘Symposium on Travel Documents for Refugees and Asylum Seekers’, held at Essex in October 2024, where Professor Gilbert wrote a 10,000-word concept note that is now being turned into an academic article for UNHCR’s Legal Research and Protection Policy Paper series.

The symposium engaged all the international actors who deal with people on the move in every aspect – UNHCR itself, the International Civil Aviation Organisation that sets the rules for every passport in the world, the International Organisation for Migration, the passport industry which make passports for nearly every country in the world, as well as forcibly displaced persons, along with several Essex colleagues who hold UN posts.