Dr. Yuval Livnat

Dr. Yuval Livnat is a TraffLab Research Fellow.

Dr. Livnat serves as the academic supervisor of the Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University School of Law, as a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel member of University of Michigan Law School's RefLaw project, and as a Research Fellow of the Trafflab ERC project.

Livnat (J.S.D., Columbia Law School, 2002) served as the legal advisor of Kav LaOved (Workers' Hotline) during 2003-2007. During these years he litigated extensively for migrant workers' rights and was involved in two precedential Supreme Court decisions (HCJ 11437/05 on a female migrant worker's right to give birth and stay in Israel with her infants until the full term of her guest worker visa, and HCJ 1105/06 on health rights of migrant workers who stay in Israel for long periods). He was also very involved in the Anti-Trafficking legislation proceedings of 2006.

In 2008, Livnat joined the Tel Aviv University Refugee Rights Clinical Program, and started representing asylum seekers and refugees, while also being in charge of the program's academic component. Concomitantly, during 2013-2018 he served as the Director of the Israeli AIDS Task Force, and during 2014-2017 as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Law & Social Change.

Research at TraffLab: In Trafflab, Livnat researches recruitment fees often paid by migrant workers, and investigates whether there should be a legal norm of "trafficking for purposes of gaining recruitment fees".