Initiated by BADIL Resource Center in Palestine, this Expert Forum is a collective effort of legal experts, academic researchers, politicians, professional human rights workers and solidarity activists worldwide, to re-examine key components of the Palestinian refugee question, issue recommendations and engage in practical follow-up.

The search for durable solutions for Palestinian refugees and displaced persons since the beginning of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the early 1990s has been dominated by a political approach which considers international law and relevant United Nations resolutions as ‘impractical’ and an obstacle to a rapid negotiated solution of the Palestinian refugee issue. The right of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced to return and repossess their properties has remained largely excluded from scholarly research, debate and recommendations.

Political actors and the media remain largely unaware or indifferent to the law and principles underlying the search for durable solutions for Palestinian refugees and displaced persons. Moreover, mechanisms for a rights-based solution (return, housing and property restitution and compensation; refugee choice) of the Palestinian refugee question have remain largely unexplored. This fact is especially striking given the large body of international practice and experience that have accumulated in the context of international refugee repatriation and restitution operations elsewhere in the world.

In 2000-2001 political negotiations between the PLO and Israel broke down. The exclusion of international law, human rights standards and UN resolutions from the terms of reference of these negotiations and the domination of power-politics have been identified as a major cause of their failure. The Palestinian, Arab, and international expert community - if adequately informed and engaged - can play an important role in the promotion of a rights-based and durable solution for one of the conflict's root causes, i.e. the forceful displacement and dispossession of some two-thirds of the Palestinian people.

Brochure of Expert Forum Brochure
Brochure of the Seminar One | Brochure of the Seminar Two
Brochure of the Seminar Three | Brochure of the Seminar Four

The initiative is supported and sponsored by: the University of Ghent, Department of Third World Studies; the University of Geneva, Graduate Institute for Development Studies (IUED); the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (PD IV); Oxfam Solidarity, Belgium; the APRODEV NGO Network; Stichting Vluchteling and ICCO, Netherlands; Al-Ahram Center for Strategic and political Studies, Egypt; Emil Toma Center, Haifa; Association for the defense of the Internally Displaced in Israel; the Flemish Palestine Committee; the Swiss Human Rights Forum. Additional sponsors and partners are needed and welcome to contact BADIL.