Fatima Ahdash

Title: The Radicalisation Cases in the Family Courts: A Critical Evaluation

Abstract:

This paper will discuss the topic of my PhD thesis: the recently emerging and growing body of family law cases, officially known as the Radicalisation Cases in the Family Courts, that deal with concerns about the impact of alleged or suspected radicalisation on parents and/or children. This paper will argue that the radicalisation cases represent an important legal development since the direct involvement of the family courts in preventing and countering (the involvement of children in) terrorism is unprecedented in the UK. The paper will subject the radicalisation cases and the novel interaction between family law and counter-terrorism that they have engendered to careful analysis and critical examination. By factually and legally contextualising the radicalisation cases, the paper examines how this interaction has taken place. The paper will go on to critically interrogate whythe radicalisation cases have appeared in the family courts at this point in time, arguing that the cases are influenced by and in fact reinforce a changing political context and a shifting counter-terrorism and security landscape that is anxious about and that seeks to regulate Muslim cultural difference, Muslim cultural life and political or ideological expressions of Islam. Finally, the paper will examine some of the worrying implications of this interaction between family law and counter-terrorism.

Bio: Fatima Ahdash is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics, where she previously undertook both the LLB and the LLM (in Human Rights Law). She has taught on Family Law and Human Rights Law courses at the LSE. Fatima has also worked for a number of human rights organisations and law-firms as a research fellow and as a consultant with Rights Watch UK – an organisation that seeks to hold the government accountable within the context of national security – researching the gendered nature and impacts of counter-terrorism law, policy and practice. Details about Fatima’s PhD project and her publications can be found here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/law/people/phd/fatima-ahdash

Dr Aravinda Kosaraju

Title: Interrogating the ‘exploitation’ in child sexual exploitation: an exploration of contemporary policy and legal discourses

Abstract: TBC

Bio: Dr Aravinda Kosaraju is a socio-legal scholar. She is currently a Lecturer at the Centre for Child Protection, University of Kent. Prior to this role, she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Kent Law School on a project titled “Crimes of child sexual exploitation in England – A socio-legal project promoting effective approaches to investigation and prosecution” funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) South East Network for Social Sciences (SENSS). She received her doctorate from the University of Kent and her thesis examined the process of attrition in cases involving crimes of child sexual exploitation in England and Wales employing a Foucauldian Feminist theoretical framework.Aravinda is a qualified lawyer with a BL (Andhra University, India) and an ML (University of Warwick, UK). She has an MA in Social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), specialising in Criminology and Correctional Administration. She has many years’ experience of working with national and international non-governmental organisations including Parents against Child Sexual Exploitation (PACE), Lawyer’s Collective, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and was involved in research and policy reform initiatives in India and UK. She had been a member of consultative groups for the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DfES), Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) contributing to the development of policy around safeguarding children from sexual exploitation. She is the founding member of Support After Rape and Sexual Violence Leeds (SARSVL) and a former director of the NWG Network.