Strategic Litigation and Sentence Transfers for Migrant Workers

Anurag Devkota is a human rights lawyer based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He is an incoming Global Criminal Justice Fellow at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Law. Anurag will deliver a seminar on how his strategic litigation work pushed for progressive reforms in Nepal's labour migration regime. His address will focus on examples involving the tragic deaths of Nepali migrant workers in GCC nations, their plight in GCC jails due to a lack of legal representation, and the potential for sentence transfer mechanisms based on the ruling of the Supreme Court of Nepal. He will also discuss the accountability of sending countries such as Nepal, as well as how out-of-country voting rights would advance the argument for establishing accountability in home countries.

Human Rights Lawyer, Researcher, Writer, Columnist and an Academician

Anurag Devkota is a human rights lawyer working on the contemporary human rights issues of Nepali migrant worker including litigating and representing Nepalese Migrant Workers on the Supreme Court of Nepal. As a labor migration advocate, Mr. Devkota has pioneered progressive changes in the overall migration governance of Nepal, through successful strategic litigations like ensuring the voting rights of migrant workers, law suits questioning the alarming deaths of Nepali migrant workers, shifting financial burdens of migrant workers, access to justice to workers, the legal assistances and counselling services as well as guaranteeing the right to return of Nepali migrant workers during the pandemic.    

Anurag holds an LLM degree on Rule of Law for Development (PROLAW) from Loyola University Chicago. Besides litigating the cases of migrant workers in the Supreme Court of Nepal, he has been advocated for the rights of Nepali migrant workers though his writings, columns and plenary sessions. His articles on the contemporary issues of labor migration are appeared in the Kathmandu Post, Kantipur, myRepublica and the Record Nepal. His research articles are been featured in academic blogs and journal including in the National Judicial Academy (NJA) Law Journal, National Human Right Commission of Nepal’s journal, GEFONT Journal, National Law College (Nepal) and internationally in Oxford University, Olbios Journal, Right Corridor  including Loyola University Chicago. He has served as a panelist in various programs and platforms representing Nepal including in Leiden University where he presented a paper on the status of undocumented migrant worker and in  Harvard University’s conference where he represented the issue of migrant deaths from Nepal and presented a paper on human trafficking under the guise of foreign labour migration case study of Nepal on The Migration Conference 2020 London. His chapter on “Understanding Irregularity in Legal Frameworks of National, Bilateral, Regional, and Global Migration Governance” has been recently featured in a book “The South Asia to Gulf Migration Governance Complex”.

His work on sentence transfer of Nepali migrant workers from foreign jails (GCC) has been featured by the DPRU Blog of Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. He will be in Oxford from November 28th to December 9th as an incoming Global Criminal Justice Fellow at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Law, delivering a seminar on migration governance and strategic litigation in Nepal.