ÌÇÐÄTV

Guest Speakers: Professor Kate Ogg, Australian National University and Dr Saba Vasefi, University of Sydney

Chair: Daniel Matthews, University of ÌÇÐÄTV Law School

Title: 'Decolonising Strategic Litigation Scholarship: Leading with Refugees’ Justice Frameworks'

Abstract: In this work in progress presentation, Saba and Kate explore the concept of and possibilities for decolonising strategic litigation scholarship. They focus on domestic and international strategic litigation that targeted Australia’s offshore detention regime. But rather than starting with the different types of litigation and the causes of action involved, they begin with refugees formerly detained in these centres. Through semi-structured, qualitative interviews, Saba and Kate foreground refugees’ framings of seeking asylum, detention and offshore processing. They then consider whether the domestic and international litigation that directly addressed Australia’s offshore processing regime aligned with refugees’ conceptualisations of justice and injustice.

This research focuses on female and transgender refugees from Iran formerly detained in Australia’s offshore processing centre in Nauru. While men detained in Australia’s offshore processing centre on Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) produced celebrated memoirs and documentaries, artistic outputs and advocacy by women and girls detained in Nauru have not attracted the same level of attention or acclaim. There are reports that document the harms women suffered in offshore detention, but in this study Saba and Kate move beyond documenting refugees’ ‘experiences’ and ‘trauma’ to exploring their intellectual and political analyses on issues such as authoritarian regimes, misogyny, discrimination, persecution, exile, incarceration, hierarchies of power and law and justice. In doing so, Saba and Kate contribute to both the emerging push for refugee-led research in the field of refugee studies as well as the scholarship on strategic litigation that purports to focus first and foremost on clients’ interests but only does so within existing doctrinal boundaries.

This research is funded by the Australian Research Council: ‘Mobilising Litigation to Effect Legal, Policy and Social Change’, Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award and Fellowship DE240100652.