Desmond FERNANDES

Desmond Fernandes is a former Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and former Course Leader for the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (Law and Health Options) at De Montfort University, England. He specialises in issues and concerns relating to the Kurdish and other genocides, the criminalisation and securitisation of communities, the use of torture and ‘disappearances’ by states, ‘deep politics’, globalisation, the political economy of tourism and the destructive impacts of mega-developments on environments and communities.

He has published widely in magazines, journals, handbooks and on-line media platforms, including the Routledge Handbook on the Kurds, the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Law, Social Justice and Global Development, Variant: Cross Currents in Culture, Peace News, the Thailand Environment Institute Journal, Armenian Forum, Socialist Lawyer, L’Appel du Kurdistan, Kurdistan Aktuell, The Kurdish Question, UCA News and Medya News. His works have been translated into a number of languages including English, French, German, Hindi, Kurdish, Turkish, Greek and Dutch and he made a series of podcasts for Medya News in 2021 exploring various human rights concerns.

Fernandes has made presentations at the 18th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers(Brussels), Gray’s Inn Square (London), the UK National Union of Journalists (NUJ) headquarters (London), the Garden Court Chambers (Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London), the Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), the Kurdish Library (Stockholm), the Gustav-Stresemann Institute (Bonn), the University of London’s Students Union, international conferences at UK universities – including Cambridge, London Metropolitan University, the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), The Institute of Education (London), Strathclyde (Glasgow), Loughborough and Queen’s University (Belfast) – as well as ones organised by the Association for Democracy and International Law, the International League for Human Rights and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights, the UK Houses of Parliament (over 20 since 2007), the European parliament, the Hague (to the Dutch Foreign Affairs Committee) and various community centres and bodies. He has guest lectured at the National Law School in India and at Cranfield and De Montfort Universities in the UK.

He is a member of the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities and Peace in Kurdistan and has authored a number of books including The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition?(Apec, Stockholm, 2007; Peri, Istanbul, 2013 – Turkish translation), Education, Human Rights Violations in Pakistan and the Scandal Involving UNHCR and Asylum Seekers in Thailand (BPCA, London, 2016 2^nd updated edition) andCall it by its name: ‘Persecution!’ (BPCA, London, 2019). He has co-authored several books including The Education System in Pakistan: Discrimination and the Targeting of the ‘Other’ (BPCA, London, 2014) and The Targeting of ‘Minority Others’ in Pakistan (BPCA, London, 2013) and has provided evidence for a number of UK parliamentary inquiries.

Several questions have additionally been raised in the UK parliament based upon the findings of his books and several analysts have concluded that they have resulted in triggering a review of the UK Home Office Policy towards Pakistani Christians and some evidence hearing sessions at the UK Parliament. Mosa Zahed, as Executive Director of Middle East Forum for Development, suggested that his findings also helped to contribute to a change in the asylum policy of the Dutch government regarding religious minorities in Pakistan.