The project “YEAR – Youth Education and Activism for Migrants’ and Refugees’ Rights” promotes the protection of migrants’ rights through the practice of voluntary legal assistance, involving young people and students from different European countries and with different educational backgrounds. In particular, the project aims to strengthen collaboration, knowledge exchange, and networking between students and activists of grassroots organizations in Europe in migrant rights protection through legal education and mobility.
The project will support the creation of the first European youth network of legal assistance to migrants and refugees by combining in an innovative way the student academic environment with civil society organizations and creating a series of tools that foster long-term exchange and collaboration. The project also promotes the involvement of young activists and university students within a European network capable of supporting them in initiatives fostering the rights of migrants and refugees.
Furthermore, the mobility activities will facilitate participants to acquire a European perspective concerning international migration and the right to asylum, as well as existing possibilities and strategies to promote access to justice for migrants and refugees. Grassroots organizations focusing on the rights of migrants and refugees will also benefit from the results of the project directly, through the acquisition of competencies and skills useful in their activities, or indirectly, as a result of the engagement of young people trained and networked at the European level by the project.
Specific goals of the project are:
Promoting the involvement of young people and students in projects of legal assistance for migrants and refugees.
Providing students and youth activists with tools to exchange expertise and know-how on protecting the rights of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, as well as on project management and fundraising.
Training a large number of European students and young activists with different backgrounds providing them with hands-on legal knowledge and skills helpful to engage in voluntary legal assistance to migrants and refugees.
Facilitating the participation of youth with a personal or family migratory background in voluntary legal assistance activities in grassroots projects of legal support of migrants and refugees.
Promoting the role of students in Legal Clinic projects as a connection between universities and civil society.
THE ACTIONS:
“Grassroots activism & Lawyering for migrants’ rights” is a free online training programme designed to help young European activists become involved in, and make a difference to, legal support and solidarity projects with migrants and asylum seekers. The programme is led by an international pool of law professors, activists, lawyers and project managers, all of whom have many years of experience in, and a long-standing commitment to, the field of protection of migrants’ rights.”
Mapping European grassroots networks of projects and initiatives of legal support for migrants and refugees: an open-access interactive map that allows finding existing grassroots legal clinics and initiatives of legal support for migrants and refugees across Europe. The aim is to provide grassroots organizations and young activists with a tool to network, increase their activities’ impact and build new alliances for a more just society.
Mobility: small groups of students and young activists involved in the project and trained in the online program will be involved in mobility activities to exchange with students, activists, and experts from different European countries and acquire a European perspective on the issue of migrants’ and refugees’ rights and the way to face it.
Job shadowing opportunities: a selected number of participants will have the chance to do an internship in the partners’ projects to explore further the topics addressed in the project, acquire new skills and knowledge, and strengthen their transnational network.
Diritti di Frontiera (Di.Fro.) is a grassroots association founded in 2013 in Rome (Italy) by a group of law students from the Legal Clinic on Migration and Asylum of the University of Roma Tre, with the aim of promoting the protection of migrants’ rights and access to justice, through the methodology of clinical legal education. Diritti di Frontiera is the first Italian association of law students focusing on clinical legal education and migrants’ rights. Since 2014, the association has been the partner of the University of Roma Tre in the Legal Clinic on Migration and Asylum project, running the legal help desk for migrants and refugees inside the Law Department.
The association was founded in April 2017 and is based in Witten (Germany), but it is also active in other European cities.
APDHA is a non-profit, pluralistic, and independent association founded in 1990, which bases its mission on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In APDHA’s 32 years of experience, the main fields of activity are six: prisons, education, marginalization, migration, international solidarity, and gender issues.
ENCLE is a non-profit association established in 2013 and based in the Czech Republic. ENCLE is a European network of law professors, students, and legal clinics committed to the promotion of social justice through legal education. ENCLE has about 240 members from more than 30 countries (EU and non-EU). Most members are students and law professors involved in legal clinics who participate individually or through their law clinics, universities, or law departments. In its eight years of activity, ENCLE has fostered collaboration in legal education to promote social justice and improve the quality of law teaching through Clinical Legal Education (CLE).
Founded in 2010, the Roma Tre Legal Clinic on Migration and Asylum (Clinica del Diritto dell’Immigrazione e della Cittadinanza) is the first legal Clinic on migration and asylum in Italy. It combines experimental learning, research, and public engagement. The Clinic offers a free and qualified professional service of legal advice and assistance to migrants and asylum seekers in collaboration with the association Diritti di Frontiera. The Clinic provides direct legal support to an average of 150 migrants and refugees each year. Since its establishment, the Clinic has carried out several research projects and advocacy activities that have had an impact at the national and international levels. Between 2014 and 2016, the Clinic coordinated the ‘Lexilium profect’, the first national research ever on judicial decisions on migrant detention and removal. The Clinic was heard by the Group of Experts on Trafficking of the European Council (Greta) and by the UN Special rapporteur on the right to food. In 2022, the Clinic engaged with the UN Special rapporteur on the situation of the human rights defenders that resulted in a joint statement by three UN Special rapporteurs calling on the Italian Government to stop criminalizing solidarity with migrant people. The Clinic is part of the Italian Network of Law Clinics and the European Network for Clinical Education (ENCLE).