Results of the activities of field teams of the project “Provision of legal and other essential information to refugees”

11/4/2017

Hellenic League for Human Rights implements, since August 2016, the project “Provision of legal and other essential information to refugees”*, in which legal counseling and other essential information is provided to asylum seekers and refugees in accommodation structures in Northern Greece and Attica.
 
Six (6) legal and/or political scientists field officers, in collaboration with a legal coordinator, a networking and advocacy officer, are providing legal counseling, in individual or group sessions at  SOFTEX refugee site  and Dion refugee site in Thessaloniki (until January 2017) and at Scaramangas site in Attica region.
 
These structures provide accommodation and hospitality in refugee populations coming mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the beneficiaries are mainly Kurds, Gezinti, Hazara, Tajik, Ghazalbas, Pashtun, Palestinians.
 
Furthermore, within the project, the website www.rights4refugees.gr has been in operation, through which refugees and asylum seekers have the opportunity to be informed, inter alia, on their rights and asylum procedures, resettlement, family reunification and find other important information in English, Arabic and Farsi.
 
Shortly, during the reference period from September 2016 to March 2017 the legal field officers have examined about 600 requests in one or more individual or group sessions (follow-up meetings), from more than 400 beneficiaries, covering the following topics :
 
•               rights of asylum seekers – refugees
•               vulnerability issues: rights and procedures
•               asylum application: procedure, case-path, interviews
•               family reunification and relative procedures
•               relocation issues and relative procedures
•               individual – social rights (marriage, baptism, divorce, naming, etc.)
•               issues in relation to criminal law
•               documents loss, issuing of documents
 

The field teams have contributed with the findings of the field in the preparation of the League’s positions on refugees, announced by HLHR under the title “Positions on the refugee situation. The second face: Challenges and weaknesses”
 
    The analytical final results of the project are expected in July 2017 in the final advocacy report.
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* The project, of twelve (12) months duration, is funded by the Open Society Foundations [Grant ID: OR 2016-28052]