FMEP Non-Resident Fellows Dr. Yara Asi and Rabea Eghbariah are joined by Dr. Ardi Imseis (Assistant Professor and Academic Director, International Law Programs at Queen’s University Law School) to talk about international law – how it applies in the current crisis, the obligations it imposes on Israel, Hamas, and the international community, and how it can be used to envision and shape next steps.
Recorded on November 20, 2023
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Panelist Biographies
Dr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics and a Visiting Scholar at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University in her capacity as Co-Director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. She is also a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, and the co-chair of the Palestine Health Justice Working Group in the American Public Health Association. She previously served as the Fall 2021 US Fellow at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She has also worked with Amnesty International USA and the Palestinian American Research Center on policy and outreach issues. She has presented at multiple national and international conferences on topics related to global health, food security, health informatics, and women in healthcare, and has published extensively on health and well-being in fragile and conflict-affected populations in journal articles and book chapters. She has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, +972 Magazine, The New Arab, and The Conversation, and has been featured on Al Jazeera, The World, and other outlets. Her forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press will examine war as a public health crisis.
Rabea Eghbariah is a human rights attorney completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School. He worked as an appellate public defender before joining the Haifa-based Adalah Legal Center, where he argued major Palestinian civil and political rights cases. Rabea published on various subjects relating to Palestinians and Israeli law, including the censorship of online speech, the legal land regime, and the criminalization of Palestinian foragers.
Ardi Imseis is Assistant Professor and Academic Director, International Law Programs at Queen’s University Law School. He joined the Queen’s Faculty of Law in 2018, following a 12-year career as a UN official in the Middle East, first with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and then with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Since leaving the UN, Ardi has continued to engage in high-level public advocacy on international law, peace and security, including a number of invited addresses to the UN Security Council. Between 2019-2021, Ardi was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to serve as a Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, a commission of inquiry mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report on violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the conflict in Yemen.