From January to December 2021, HRL will be implementing a project called „Families without Borders: How Families with Immigration Status can Enjoy their Lives Together in Slovakia“ which focuses on the promotion of the right to respect for family and private life of foreign families, with specific focus on LGBTI families.
In addition to promoting the right of families of foreigners on family and private life, the aim of the project is the enhancement of the legal awareness of experts and public on this topic by publishing 6 podcasts, one legal article and organizing a Webinar on this issue. Within the project a network of lawyers specializing on the migration law will be created with the intention to intertwine the members with the experts from the USA and the Netherlands. We will also pay attention to the young generation of lawyers, not only from Slovakia, but also from the USA, specifically from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.HRL´s project activities:
1) Legal aid and legal representation
Legal aid will be focused on strategically selected cases of foreigners who plan to live in Slovakia or who already live there, but their right to family or private life has been violated, whereas the outcome of this legal aid may also be applicable to various other cases of foreigners. We will also involve students of the Faculty of Law of the Trnava University in Trnava in this activity, who will, under the supervision of lawyers, participate in individual acts.
2) Raising legal awareness of the right to family and private life
As part of this activity, we will write an expert article on the topic of the right to family and private life, prepare a series of podcasts entitled "Love Without Borders", which will be published on the webpage .Týždeň and Spotify, and publish several posts on social media.
3) Creating a network of lawyers and organizing a Webinar
HRL will create a network of migration lawyers specializing in the provision of legal aid to foreigners, on family and private life and on the rights of LGBTI persons. Members should meet on regular basis (quarterly) in order to exchange legal views and experiences on the above-mentioned rights. In the second half of the year, the Webinar with experts from the USA and the Netherlands will be organized.
4) Summer Internship at HRL
In the summer of 2021, a student from the University of Cincinnati College of Law will be accepted for an internship at HRL. This Internship will be secured within the cooperation of the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights. The selected student will work on research focusing on the analysis of the case law of the ECtHR and other human rights institutions.
Duration of the project: 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2021
Contact person for the project in HRL: Miroslava Mittelmannová (mittelmannova@hrl.sk)
The project is supported in the amount of USD 20,000 by the Government of the United States of America under the Small Grants Program.
