Bill Frelick

Bill Frelick is the director of Human Rights Watch’s Refugee Policy Program, through which he monitors, investigates, and documents human rights abuses against refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons, and advocates for the rights and humanitarian needs of all categories of forcibly displaced persons. The work of the Human Rights Watch refugee policy program is global in scope.

From 2002-2005, Mr. Frelick was the director of Amnesty International USA’s Refugee Program. He was also previously the director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, which he served for 18 years (1984-2002). He has traveled to refugee sites throughout the world and is widely published. He was the editor of USCR’s annual World Refugee Survey and monthly Refugee Reports.

•   Op-ed Pieces (smaller papers and newsletters not listed):  New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Washington Post; Christian Science Monitor; Chicago Tribune; Los Angeles Times; Int’l Herald Tribune; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Philadelphia Inquirer; Newsday; Toronto Star; Toronto Globe and Mail; Ottawa Citizen; Miami Herald; San Diego Union-Tribune; Sacramento Bee; Washington Times; Houston Post; Atlanta Constitution.
•   Academic/Law Journals:  Georgetown Immigration Law Journal; Harvard International Review; Journal of Refugee Studies; Cornell International Law Journal; International Journal of Refugee Law; Interpreter Releases; Issue: A Journal of Opinion (African Studies Association); Social Education; Migration: A European Journal of International Migration and Ethnic Relations; Immigration Newsletter (Nat’l Lawyer’s Guild); Bender’s Immigration Bulletin; Forced Migration Review.
•   Chapters in Books: Refugees in America in the 1990s (Greenwood Press); Genocide Watch (Yale University Press); Reconceiving International Refugee Law (Kluwer Academic Publishers); Encyclopedia Americana (Grolier); Forced Out:  The Agony of the Refugee in Our Time (Human Rights Watch); People Without a Country: The Kurds in Kurdestan (Olive Branch Press); America's Original Sin (Sojourners).
•   Reports and Issue Papers:  The Silent Treatment:  Fleeing Iraq, Surviving in Jordan (2006);  Inside Chechnya:  Misery Fear, and Abuse (2001); Reversal of Fortune:  Yugoslavia’s Refugee Crisis since the Ethnic Albanian Return to Kosovo (2000); The Wall of Denial:  Internal Displacement in Turkey (1999); Barriers to Protection:  Turkey’s Asylum Regulations (1996);  Filling the Gap:  Temporary Protected Status (1994); Faultlines of Nationality Conflict:  Refugees and Displaced Persons from Armenia and Azerbaijan (1994);  Last Ditch Options on Bosnia (1993); Yugoslavia Torn Asunder: Lessons for Protecting Refugees from Civil War (1992); Mass Exodus: Iraqi Refugees in Iran (1991); Running the Gauntlet:  The Central American Journey Through Mexico (1991); Refugees at Our Border:  The U.S. Response to Asylum Seekers (1989); The Back of the Hand: Bias and Restrictionism towards Central American Asylum Seekers in North America (1988).
•   Refugee Field Work:  Albania, Armenia; Azerbaijan (including Nagorno-Karabakh); Bosnia; Canada; Croatia; Cuba (Guantanamo); Dominican Republic; Guatemala; Haiti; Hungary; India; Iran; Iraq; Italy; Jordan; Kenya; Kuwait; Macedonia; Mexico; Montenegro; Nepal; Panama; Poland; Russia (including Chechnya); Serbia (including Kosovo); Slovenia; Turkey; USA (INS detention centers in California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Florida); Yemen.

Frelick taught in the Middle East from 1979-1983. He was co-coordinator of the Asian Center of Clergy and Laity Concerned 1976-1979. He has a B.A. from Oberlin College, Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. from Columbia University.