Fezile Osum

Fezile Osum holds an LLB degree from the University of Kent and Human Rights Law (LLM) degree from İstanbul Bilgi University. Her LLM thesis was on Wartime Rapes in International Criminal Courts Case Law and Cyprus Conflicts. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire, UK and her research involves a study on conflict-related sexual violence and transitional justice. She has been awarded the Senesh Fellowship from the International Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRA Foundation) for the years 2021 and 2022 for her PhD research.

She previously worked as a project coordinator between 2019 and 2021 in the EU-funded Coordinated Measures and Mechanisms for Anti-Trafficking (COMMIT) Project with the Refugee Rights Association. She also worked very closely with refugees and asylum seekers as their legal advisor under the “Strengthening Asylum in Cyprus” project between 2017 and 2019, implemented in partnership with the SOS Children’s Village and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cyprus.

Fezile has been working and volunteering in various human rights organizations including the Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation, Queer Cyprus Association, and Refugee Rights Association in the northern part of Cyprus. She is also registered in the Cyprus Turkish Bar Association and is a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Bar Association. She worked as research assistant in two projects led by Assistant Professor Dr Nasia Hadjigeorgiou recently, one on the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, funded by IPRA Foundation, and the other on trafficking in human beings, in collaboration with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL).

Her main areas of interest are transitional justice, gender studies, international humanitarian law, refugee law, and combating human trafficking.