The Migration Law Research Group coordinates the migration law component of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic.

GENERAL

The Human Rights and Migration Law clinic has a dual objective:

• To provide Master studentswith intensive, hands-on, practical education in the form of Clinical Legal Education in the field of human rights and migration law; and
• To fulfil a central social justice role by contributing to the effective protection of human rights, in particular those of disadvantaged persons and groups.

To achieve the dual objective of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic, the Human Rights Centre cooperates with a number of partners from civil society that work on human rights and migration law issues. On a yearly basis, organisations can submit potential projects, out of which the Centre selects the most suitable ones, in light of the Clinic’s objectives of education and social justice promotion. The selected projects are then distributed among the students, who – divided in small groups – work under supervision of legal clinic coaches on these real life case files. Their responsibilities include contacting the partner, analysing the problem in human rights terms and doing intensive research to delivering the required end product to the partner.

MIGRATION LAW PROJECTS

For the migration law component of the legal clinic, students work with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, NANSEN (the Belgian Refugee Council) and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE).

Projects 2018-2019

In the academic year 2018-2019, students concentrate on three themes: statelessness, asylum and selected asylum-related policy developments at the EU level.

• Students support asylum seekers or people who are eligible for subsidiary protection, based on consultation with these persons and thorough research.
• Based on contact with stateless persons and thorough research, students work on the dual challenges stateless persons face: being recognized as stateless persons and securing one’s residency on that basis.
• Students draft two research papers to support ECRE with their advocacy and policy work. The papers will further be distributed to the ELENA Network, existing out of asylum lawyers. The topic of the research papers in the first semester is the circumvention of the Dublin Regulation through the use of bilateral agreements. In the second semester the focus will be on the accountability of the European Asylum Support Agency.

The students of the migration law component of the legal clinic will be coached intensively by experienced practitioners, namely Geertrui Daem, Benoit Dhondt, Lennert Dierickx and Birte Schorpion.

Projects 2017-2018

For the migration law component of the legal clinic, students will work with UNHCR and with NANSEN, the new Belgian partner of the UNHCR. This year, students will concentrate on two themes: statelessness and asylum.

• Based on contact with stateless persons and thorough research, students will work on the dual challenges stateless persons face: being recognized as stateless persons and securing one’s residency on that basis.
• Advice on statelessness and Palestine (in Dutch)
• Students will support asylum seekers or people who are eligible for subsidiary protection, based on consultation with these persons and thorough research.

The students of the migration law component of the legal clinic will be coached intensively by two experienced migration lawyers, Benoit Dhondt and Elke Van de Cotte.

OUTPUT

The following output of the Migration Law Clinic is publicly available:

Advice on statelessness and Palestine (in Dutch)