Opening Session

Conference Opening 27 AprilDownload

Gabor Gyulai (Hungarian Helsinki Committee)

Gabor Gyulai
Director of the Refugee Programme at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee

Gábor is the director of the Refugee Programme at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (a leading human rights NGO in Central Europe, a winner of numerous international human rights awards, including the prestigious Gulbenkian Prize of 2017 in Portugal). Gábor has over two decades of professional experience in the field of forced migration, his particular professional interests are evidence and credibility assessment in asylum procedures; interdisciplinary (psychological, intercultural, linguistic and gender) issues related to asylum; human rights safeguards concerning the detention of migrants; nationality and statelessness; as well as innovative training, communication and capacity-building methods in the field of human rights and forced migration. He has extensively researched and published on these issues. Gábor is a professional international trainer: in the past fifteen years he had the privilege to teach over four thousand lawyers, judges, public administration and police officers, journalists, professors, NGO workers and staff members of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) from all continents of the world, on various topics related to asylum, migration and statelessness, in six languages. Gábor is also a trustee and a founding member of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), an external expert with the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) and the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), a founding member of the Latin American Academic Network on the Law and Integration of Refugees (Red LAREF) and a PhD candidate at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona . (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6489-1306) .

Recent Publications:

Grian A. Cutanda (University of Granada, Spain)

Grian A. Cutanda
University of Granada, Spain

Grian is a Spanish bestselling author –The Gardener (HarperCollins, 1998)– with 16 books published (fiction and essay), translated to 12 languages, He is also a psychologist, educator, researcher, activist and translator. Summa cum Laude PhD in Education Sciences, he is linked as a researcher and lecturer to the University of Granada (Spain), since 2015. His research focuses on worldview education and traditional stories as multicultural tools to transmit a complex-systems worldview and the principles and values of the Earth Charter. Founder of The Avalon Project – Initiative for a Culture of Peace, he is leading a double global project, in association with the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and the Earth Charter Secretariat, at the United Nations’ University for Peace:

  • The Earth Stories Collection (TESC), a global bank of traditional stories capable of convey a systemic, holistic and ecological worldview; and,
  • The Earth Story Tellers, a global network of storytelling activists connected with TESC and the Earth Charter.

As an activist, Grian was one of the main organisers of the climate campaign in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2014 and 2015, and has been one of the prime movers of the social movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) in Spain and Mexico. He has also been part of XR International as regional liaison for Latin America and XR Global Support. His environmental activism reached an international level when, in September 2021, he held a 33-day hunger strike as part of the Global Earth Fast campaign organised by Extinction Rebellion UK. This made him, along with Karen Killeen, the activist who held his hunger strike against climate change the longest in the world. .

Recent Publications:

  • Overturning the Narrative: Storytelling and Activism. To be published in 2022 in UK.
  • Extinction Rebellion: Siguiendo los pasos de Saramago. In Nogueira, C.; Baltrusch, B. & Cerdá, J. (eds.), José Saramago e os Desafios do Nosso Tempo, pp. 15-28. Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2022.
  • Cutanda, G. A.; Kendall, B. P. & Borecký, P. The Earth Stories Collection, or How to End Modernism Once and for All [Video]. Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival 2021, 19-28 March. Available on https://youtu.be/WCRCrpk1fcQ
  • The Earth Stories Collection: A planetary mythology grounded in the Earth Charter. In Vilela, M. & Jiménez, A. (eds.), Earth Charter, Education and the Sustainable Development Goal 4.7. San José: University for Peace Press 2020.
  • The Earth Stories Collection: The Myths of the Future. TESC Press: Granada 2020.
  • Changing worldviews through traditional stories and the Earth Charter; The Secret of Dreaming: Introducing systems thinking and worldview. In Moltan-Hill, P. & Luna, H. (eds.), Storytelling and Sustainability. Routledge: London 2020.
  • El sabio enamorado y el jardín del Califa [The Sage in Love and the Caliph’s Garden]. (together with M. Pimentel). Editorial Almuzara: Cordoba, 2014.

Website: https://avalonproject.org/es/

Twitter: @Grian333

Facebook: Grian A. Cutanda

Bruna Kadletz (St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace)

Bruna Kadletz
University of Edinburgh

Bruna Kadletz is a facilitator, writer, public speaker and humanitarian activist. Bruna holds a MSc in Sociology and Global Change from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, with focus on forced displacement and climate change. She has visited and worked with refugee communities in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Serbia, France, among other countries.

Bruna is the founder and director of Circles of Hospitality, a Brazilian non-profit organization whose work lies in regenerating a culture of peace and hospitality in times of polarization and xenophobia against refugees and vulnerable immigrants. Over the past years, she has coordinated humanitarian responses and integration projects for refugee populations, supporting more than five thousand people. Through these projects, the organization she chairs has worked in partnership and collaborated with UN Agencies, the Brazilian Government, international foundations, and other non-profit organizations.

Bruna is an associate fellow of St. Ethelburga’s: Center for Reconciliation and Peace in London, England. She is the author of the book “My land lives in me”, by Editora Insular and is about to publish her second book “Hospitality, not hostility”.

On the documentary “My land lives in me”

A Yellow Asylum Films production in association with Tony Tyan Trust, this film was directed by Alan Gilsenan and written by Bruna Kadletz. In the shape of a “film essay”, this documentary focuses on the global refugee crisis and attempts to provide a personal and spiritual perspective of the worst humanitarian crisis of our times. It travels from Florianópolis, in the south of Brazil, to the Amazon region, Europe, Middle East and North Africa. Intimate, the documentary reveals the needs of populations subject to forced displacement and reflects upon our responses to this crisis. The author sees spirituality as a sense of connection with something bigger than the individual, aligned with the awareness of the transforming power of inner work as having impact on the outer world. This story invites people to hear the calling in their hearts to engage themselves with the issue of forced displacement in a more profound way.

Website: https://www.brunakadletz.com/

Facebook: Bruna Kadletz

Twitter: @filmwayfarers (My Land Lives In Me)

Mohamad Feras Al-Lahham (University of Algiers / Federal University of Paraná)

Mohamad Feras Al-Lahham
University of Algiers /
Federal University of Paraná

Dr. Mohamad Feras Al-Lahham is a Syrian otorhinolaryngologist with extensive experience in complex surgeries and active on the front lines of combating COVID-19 and medical care for refugees. He graduated in medicine at the University of Sana’a, Yemen, in 2006. In the same year, he started his residency in internal medicine and emergency at the University of Damascus, Syria. Then, Dr. Mohamad began his residency in the ENT Department at the University of Algiers, Algeria, obtaining the title of specialist in otorhinolaryngology in 2013. During the ENT residency he acquired extensive experience in high complexity surgeries of head and neck and cochlear implant.

In Brazil, he revalidated his medicine and specialist degrees at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 2016 and 2017, respectively. He earned a MSc in Clinical Surgery at the Federal University of Paraná in 2021. Dr. Mohamad is part of the clinical staff of Hospital IPO and Hospital Santa Cruz, and is the technical director of Clínica Síria. His areas of otorhinology include treatment of hearing loss, ear, nose and throat surgery, snoring and sleep apnea surgery, among others. He is the co-founder of the project I Hear U, which offers medical assistance to refugees living in Brazil and in refugee camps.

Twitter: @feras_lahham

Coverage: The ‘I Hear U’ project builds medical bridges between Brazil and refugees. MEMO – Middle East Monitor (2022).