Refugee Governance in the Arab World: The International Refugee Regime and Global Politics

A guest lecture by Professor Tamirace Fakhoury of Tufts University.

Co-sponsored with the 91ºÚÁÏÍø Refugee Research Group.

´¡²ú²õ³Ù°ù²¹³¦³Ù:ÌýÌýThe Arab region has played a significant role in hosting refugees. While Arab states are often hyper-visible in debates centered on refugee numbers, the histories, lived experiences, and political dimensions of refugee governance within these societies remain largely obscured. Scholarly engagement with the region’s contributions to shaping the international refugee regime is still limited. In this talk, I present key findings from our recently published co-edited anthology Refugee Governance in the Arab World: The International Refugee Regime and Global Politics (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Academic, open-access funded by Sciences Po, 2025). We argue that Arab states have not been passive bystanders in the post-1945 global refugee regime. Rather, they have actively shaped, contested, and disrupted core norms at its heart. Ultimately, the anthology calls for a multi-centric understanding of the global refugee regime, one that embraces pluriversality in narrating refugee histories and politics.