During the 4 years he spent at UNHCR, eventually as Head of Office, Neil focused on building UNHCR’s Malta presence, engaging in heavy advocacy efforts with the Maltese authorities, supporting NGOs and promoting a rights-based discourse and approach to migration and asylum. These were difficult days: negative public opinion was almost violent, just a handful of civil society organisations, one of Europe’s harshest detention policies, no life prospects for refugees in Malta, a struggling public administration and no real UNHCR office. Malta was then experiencing the arrival by boat of hundreds of refugees leaving Libya. In 2005 Neil was engaged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He then successfully completed his Mediterranean Masters in Human Rights and Democratisation in 2004, writing his dissertation at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law on the positive duty of states to prevent human rights violations. At the time Neil headed Amnesty International’s Malta branch. Neil Falzon was awarded his law degree in 2001, writing his dissertation on the role of the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.
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