Bio
Dr Omotunde Enigbokan isan O’Brien Human Rights Fellow in Residence at the Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism (CHRLP), McGill University. She is a qualified lawyer and an expert in migrant’s and stateless person’s rights. Omotunde holds an LLD from the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa (September 2023). Her research interests focus on the intersection between birth registration, legal identity, prevention of statelessness and rights of refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons.
Omotunde worked as a research assistant and project coordinator on several migration projects while working in the Migrant’s Rights Unit of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria from 2019 to 2023. She worked as a research assistant to Dr Romola Adeola (former Assistant Director, Centre for Refugee Studies York University) on the Global Engagement Network on Internal Displacement in Africa (GENIDA) project which was an international collaboration between the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa, and the Refugee Law Initiative at School of Advanced Study, University of London, United Kingdom. She also worked as a research consultant on a project funded by the UNHCR Southern-African Bureau in partnership with the Centre for Human Rights, which focussed on ‘the application of African refugee law in the context of the effects of climate change, environmental degradation, and disasters, particularly their impact on “public order”. Omotunde also engages in advocacy missions to African countries, promoting the ratification of African human rights instruments. She is among the expert contributors to African Guiding Principles on the Human Rights of All Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers (2023). She has lectured severally on the international and African regional human rights laws on statelessness and nationality in the annual Advanced Human Rights Course of the Centre for Human Rights on the protection of forcibly displaced persons in Africa.
She is a valued member of an international research team for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant-funded project on Canada-South Africa Human Rights Engagement led by Prof Obiora Okafor and Prof Sylvia Bawa of York University, Toronto, Canada.
Publications
- Book Review: Solomon Oseghale Momoh, Statelessness Determination Procedures and the Right to Nationality: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective (Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon and New York 2023) 260 pp, ISBN 978-1-003-27873-3 (ebk). International Journal of Refugee Law (Forthcoming 2023)
- African countries need to ensure that the health of refugees is protected during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Making the right to vote of IDPs a reality: Lessons from Ethiopia