Deniz Arbet Nejbir

Deniz Arbet Nejbir is a Kurdish human rights activist and lawyer. He is an associate fellow at the Johns Hopkins of School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-Europe, Italy. He is also employed as an assistant professor at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law.

He received a full scholarship from both Ruskin College, Oxford and the University of Warwick to pursue his undergraduate law degree. Prior to commencing his PhD at Queen’s University, he obtained an advanced master’s degree (LLM) in International and European Law with distinction from Vrije Universiteit Brussels, where he was awarded a full scholarship. He graduated from DEL funded PhD in December 2019, with very minor corrections. His PhD thesis entitled “The Treatment of the Kurds and the Kurdish Language by the Turkish State,” generates a new theoretical approach to the examination of the suppression of the Kurds and Kurdish language in Turkey by providing unprecedented examination of Turkey’s systematic Kurdish annihilation policy under international and European human rights law and minority law and international criminal law, namely crimes against humanity and cultural and linguistic genocide. His PhD thesis makes an original contribution to Kurdish studies on Turkey and it is such high quality that it was subsequently awarded a book contract by the prestigious publishing house Routledge. The book is due to be published in 2022.
His scholarship is not only based on extensive study and documentary research, but also on my long-standing working experience in the field of human rights and international law. He has a wealth of practical experience in representing human rights victims and advocating on their behalf in various UK and international institutions, including the Immigration and Asylum Tribunals, Interpol, the United Nations Human Rights Committees and European Court of Human Rights. His academic background and practical experience provided him with a broad knowledge of international and European human rights law, international criminal law and an in-depth understanding of international humanitarian law, crimes against humanity, cultural genocide, minority rights and the Kurdish conflict in Turkey.