Our members

Clara Van Thillo is a PhD researcher and teaching assistant in international law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven. She is also a visiting teaching assistant at the University of Hasselt. At the Centre, Clara pursues a PhD on the role that UNHCR plays in the development of the international legal framework on statelessness under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters. 
Prior to joining the Centre, she worked as an intern at the General Representative of the Government of Flanders to the United Nations in Geneva. She holds a Master of Laws degree, which she obtained from KU Leuven in 2021. Her Master’s thesis examined the prosecution of sexual violence against the stateless Rohingya in Myanmar before the International Criminal Court. She also studied one semester at the University of Barcelona in 2019.

NANSEN is an independent center of expertise in refugee law based in Brussels. Persons in a vulnerable position are core to our mandate in particular: victims of torture, stateless persons and migrants in administrative detention. Our mission is to develop and make available to all persons in need of international protection quality legal aid so that their fundamental rights become more effective. To achieve this objective, we combine technical legal expertise with an interdisciplinary approach to asylum. NANSEN was set up in 2017 by a group of lawyers and academics experienced in the field of refugee, human rights and migration law.

Omar Othman has been working to raise awareness of the challenges facing refugees and stateless people since arriving in Europe. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Methods of Teaching English as a Foreign Language and a Master’s degree in Management from Belgium. Born in Khan Younis, Palestine, Omar has organised and spoken at various university-sponsored regional and national events to improve their understanding of the complexities of asylum and statelessness in Belgium. His work touches on cultural, human developmental as well as legal dimensions. Principally, Omar seeks to find strategies for potential citizens to become healthy and dependable contributors to the society they are living within.