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Let's Give Refugees a Chance IV

The project aims to prevent the radicalization of youth, as well as to promote and protect the rights of a vulnerable group of refugees and migrants, in particular the right to asylum and the right to personal liberty.
The project "Let's Give Refugees a Chance IV" seamlessly follows up on the project "Let's Give Refugees a Chance III" and combines education and direct legal aid, thus focusing on preventing discrimination, racism and xenophobia among young people (in the form of interactive workshops on migration at primary and secondary schools with the participation of refugees, and lectures at the Police Academy), as well as for the promotion and protection of human rights (asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups of migrants in detention). Implementation period of the project: January - December 2020.

Main project activities:

1) Education and training of primary and secondary school pupils / students with a focus on the prevention of youth radicalization

Workshops at primary and secondary schools aim to contribute to the education of young people towards tolerance, elimination of prejudices against refugees and rebutting the myths and stereotypes. Intolerance of migrants, especially refugees and Muslims, is palpable in our society. Hatred often takes the form of verbal or physical attacks on refugees, which they have to face in everyday life in Slovakia. The main cause of this situation is the fear of the unknown and the lack of knowledge of the facts about migration and refugees. The aim of these workshops is therefore to provide primary and secondary school pupils and students with facts about migration and asylum to better understand the topic of forced migration in an innovative way using comic stories of refugees and with a participation of a real refugee who will share his own experience with fleeing to safety. These activities strive to prevent xenophobia and act as a prevention against the radicalization of youth. 20 workshops will be held at primary and secondary schools throughout Slovakia from September to December 2020.

2) Education and training of the future policemen towards understanding the human rights and working with migrants

The aim is to improve the understanding of human rights and migration by the police officers and future police officers. Training police officers on human rights is important as police officers decide on migrants' rights. We have long-standing cooperation with the Police Academy in Bratislava in the field of education of the future police officers. As part of the project, we will organize lectures given by at least two foreign experts on the current topics of migration (with a focus on the human rights aspect). The lectures will take place in the autumn of 2020.

3) Direct legal assistance to foreigners in detention centers - protection of the right to asylum and right to personal liberty

As part of this project, we will provide legal assistance to asylum seekers as well as other vulnerable foreigners in detention centres who are likely, on the basis of their individual circumstances, to be imposed with less coercive measures replacing their detention. We will provide legal assistance throughout 2020 (January to December 2020) in detention centres in Medveďov and Sečovce. Legal aid will include legal advice as well as legal representation in proceedings before administrative authorities (Migration Office of the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic, foreign police) and courts, or other relevant bodies (the Public |defender of Rights, the Prosecutor's Office, international institutions - the ECtHR or the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child). Part of the legal aid is the use of interpretation services.

 

4) Analysis of the exercise of the right to compensation for unlawful detention

The output of this activity will be an analysis of the exercise of the right to compensation for unlawful detention and the effectiveness of its use by foreigners, in whose case the court ruled that their detention was unlawful, in practice. The analysis should subsequently serve as a tool for more effective legal assistance for unlawfuly detained foreigners, as well as an advocacy tool for designing and enforcing systemic changes.

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 in the amount of EUR 34 630. The Human Rights League is solely responsible for the content of this document.