Indigenous (In)Justice, Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev

Please join the Center for Palestine Studies & the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race for a book discussion with Ahmad Amara, John Sheehan and Brinkley Messick.

Monday, 25 February 2013
6:30PM-8PM
Room 208, Knox Hall, Columbia University
606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY

Indigenous (in)Justice addresses property issues related to indigenous Palestinians and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev from a comparative and international legal perspective. In addition to the Bedouin-Palestinian experience, this book discusses the Australian, Canadian, and U.S. cases of indigenous treatment and land expropriation.

The indigenous Bedouin Arab population in the Naqab/Negev desert in Israel has experienced a history of displacement, intense political conflict, and cultural disruption, along with recent rapid modernization, forced urbanization, and migration. This volume of essays highlights international, national, and comparative law perspectives and explores the legal and human rights dimensions of land, planning, and housing issues, as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. Within this context, the essays examine the various dimensions of the “negotiations” between the Bedouin Arab population and the State of Israel.

Indigenous (In)Justice locates the discussion of the Naqab/Negev question within the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and within key international debates among legal scholars and human rights advocates, including the application of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the formalization of traditional property rights, and the utility of restorative and reparative justice approaches. Leading international scholars and professionals, including the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are among the contributors to this volume.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER) at Columbia University.

AHMAD AMARA is a PhD candidate in history and Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. Before pursuing his PhD degree, Amara served for three years as a clinical instructor and global advocacy fellow with Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. His work at Harvard focused on social, cultural, and economic rights in the Middle East and on the Law of Occupation, and he has published a number of reports and articles in this area. Amara holds an LLB and LLM from Tel-Aviv University, where he also served as a teaching assistant and a coordinator of the Street Law Clinic Program at the Faculty of Law. He is a member of the Israeli Bar. In 2005, he completed a second master’s degree in international human rights law at Essex University in the United Kingdom. In 2005, he co-founded a human rights organization, Karama (Arabic for “dignity”), in Nazareth, where he served as a senior staff attorney. Amara’s current research focuses on the legal history of property law in Palestine, including Ottoman, British, and Israeli legislation.

JOHN SHEEHAN is a leading Australian property theorist and expert on compensation assessment arising from compulsory acquisition of native title in Australia. He is deputy director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Complex Real Property Rights, and adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is a former acting commissioner with the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, and previously a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Tribunal of Queensland. He is also a life fellow of the Australian Property Institute. In November 2010, Sheehan was one of the invited members of the expert meeting “Land Tenure Issues and Requirements for Implementing Climate Change Mitigation Policies in the Forestry and Agriculture Sectors” convened in Rome by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The report of the meeting, which focused on traditional and customary tenures, was submitted to in-form the subsequent Cancun Conference.

BRINKLEY MESSICK, co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He specializes in the anthropology of law, legal history, written culture, and the circulation and interpretation of Islamic law.

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