Year 2012 was a very successful year for the refugee program – the legal clinic continued its work for the second consecutive year, an awareness raising project was launched and an international project on giving early legal advice for protection applicants started in September.
77 people lodged asylum applications in Estonia in 2012. Estonian Human Rights Centre (EHRC) gave legal advice and/or representation in total to 34 applicants. The applicants were from various African countries such as Cameroon, Somalia, Congo, Guinea, Ivory Coast, but we also had applicants from Ukraine, Russian Federation, Armenia, Georgia etc.
Police and Border Guard Board made 7 negative and 7 positive decisions (5 people received refugee status and 2 subsidiary protection) about our clients’ asylum applications. For the rest of the applicants the decisions have not been made yet and are expected this year therefore it is important to continue legal counselling and the work of refugee legal clinic in 2013.
The refugee legal clinic is funded by the European Union, European Refugee Fund and Estonian Ministry of the Interior.
An awareness raising project on international forced migration got funded by the Ministry of the Interior and the European Refugee Fund in July. The project consists of three parts: awareness raising activities, seminars for Estonian journalists and lecture series in universities.
In 2012 there were two awareness raising activities carried out – Tartu Love Film Festival tARTuFF which partly focused on the issues of forced migration and the Black Night Film Festival’s Human Rights Special Program which focused on forced migration. Both of which screened thematic films and had several discussions on the topics.
There were three activities carried out for Estonian journalists: a study visit to Stockholm in co-operation with UNHCR, a seminar on (the lack of) the freedom of media and speech in Belarus and a seminar on the European challenges in dealing with migration.
Also the lecture series was developed in co-operation with Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University and the University of Tartu.
All the three projects will continue its work in 2013.
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