The project aims to to provide legal assistance to asylum seekers in detention, to improve the availability and quality of interpretation, and to train and educate future police officers on human rights and other cultures.
This project builds on the long-standing activities of the Human Rights League and our support of refugees. It aims to improve the availability and quality of interpretation services, which are the key to immediate understanding upon their arrival to Slovakia but also during the integration process. We emphasise the importance of educating the future police officers about human rights and about understanding other cultures, in collaboration with the Police Academy and the Secondary Police School in Košice. Finally, we help with the direct legal aid to the most vulnerable group - asylum seekers in detention, with special emphasis on ensuring legal assistance to families with children, unaccompanied minors, women, and other vulnerable asylum seekers and foreigners in detention.
Activities continuously interlock with our previous projects "Let's Give Refugees a Chance", "Let's Give Refugees a Chance II", and "Legal assistance in detention".
Dates of the project implementation: 1.6.2019 - 31.12.2019.
Main project activities:
1) Improving the quality of interpretation:
In this project, we plan to build on the previous activities, deepen the cooperation and communication with the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic and with other professionals and entities that use interpreting for their work. We plan to organize two seminars for interpreters - one in Bratislava and the other in Košice.
2) Education and training of the future policemen towards understanding the human rights and working with people from other cultures:
The aim is to improve the understanding of police officers and the future police officers about human rights and migration. We have been cooperating for a longer period of time with the Police Academy in Bratislava in the field of the education of the future police officers. As a part of the project, we plan to organize 4 lectures with 5 foreign lecturers which would be held in Bratislava at the Academy of Police Force and at the Secondary Police School in Košice on topics such as working with an interpreter, the principle of protecting the best interests of the child and preserving the unity of the family within the field of the migration control, human rights aspects of the use of the coercive tactics, and so on.
3) Legal assistance to the detained asylum seekers and other foreigners placed in detention centers in Sečovce and Medveďov:
This activity will ensure the effective exercise of the right to seek asylum and the right to personal freedom of the asylum seekers. As part of the Let's Give Refugees a Chance III project, we will provide legal assistance including legal representation to asylum seekers, with particular emphasis on ensuring the legal representation for families with children, unaccompanied minors, women, and other vulnerable asylum seekers. As a part of the legal aid services in the detention centers, we also want to address the issue of violation of the personal freedom of the detained asylum seekers and other detained foreigners, with the aim of ensuring a judicial review of the detention order of the foreign police - and applying detention of foreigners only as a measure of last resort and prefering less restrictive measures in the form of residency reports or financial resources guarantees.
The project is implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic within the grant scheme that aims to promote, support and protect human rights and freedoms and to prevent all forms of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and other expressions of intolerance. The Human Rights League is solely responsible for the content of this document.
