• Professor James Hathaway who will be joining the Asylum Access team as Senior Advisor, providing strategic advice and training for staff and leading a thought provoking interdisciplinary workshop at Stanford University discussing human rights and refugee response.
• Videographer Lennon Flowers interviewed ED Emily Arnold-Fernandez on how Asylum Access was founded and the rights-based approach used to advocate for refugees’ worldwide. Watch the video.
• Asylum Access published the 2012-2013 Annual Report, which includes the past year’s accomplishments. Download or read the report online.
• AATZ Director Janemary Ruhundwa has been chosen to be among the Acumen Fellowship’s East African class of 2014. The Fellowship Program provides participants intensive training to improve their capacity to execute on a social change project.
• AAE is developing a community action plan with refugees in Las Tolas, a neighborhood in Quito, to focus on their right to safe and lawful employment, access to housing and education.
• AAE alumnus Daniel Berlin just launched a campaign to raise funds for Asylum Access: “I plan to bike across Zimbabwe to South Africa, and then run the Two Oceans Ultra Marathon in Cape Town. My bike trip will follow a path that many refugees and asylum seekers take on their way to South Africa.”
• AATZ has reached out to the Somali and Congolese communities in an effort to build more ties with the refugee population in Dar es Salaam. As result of this outreach, AATZ will be training community leaders on legal services and was also asked to review the Congolese Community Constitution. We look forward to further cooperation with these communities!
• AATZ organized a focus group where clients could share their views on AATZ services. The session proved very fruitful, and clients felt at ease to share freely and honestly. Clients with peasant permits were particularly satisfied as the permits protect them from refoulement and allow them to access their right to work.
• AAE VLA Sebastian Muy wrote an article for Hinterland, a German magazine that discusses asylum policy. In his article, available in German and Spanish, Sebastian describes the refugee context in Ecuador as well as the work being carried out by Asylum Access Ecuador.
• AAE continues leading work on the Cartagena @30 Initiative, a research project with the aim of improving the protection and social inclusion of refugees, IDPs and stateless persons in the Americas.
• AAT Legal Services Coordinator Chantal Hudson presented at a training held by AAT, UNHCR Bangkok and JRS Bangkok that was organized to train legal advocates from all organizations on a new tool, “Practical Operational Guidance regarding Confidentiality of Individual Case Information.”

 
[box]Quarterly Figures at a Glance

In Ecuador, we provided individualized legal assistance and community legal empowerment reaching a total of 1,090 refugees.

In Tanzania, we provided individualized legal assistance and community legal empowerment reaching a total of 139 refugees.

In Thailand, we we provided individualized legal assistance and community legal empowerment reaching a total of 616 refugees.[/box]

Published February 2014.