Refugee Law Training in Van

On 21-22 July, RRT carried out a two-day certificate training for lawyers in the city of Van in Eastern Turkey, in collaboration with the provincial bar association. Van remains an important point of arrival for refugees from Afghanistan and Iran.

The city of Van hosts sizeable Afghan and Iranian asylum seeker commumities. There are also two large-scale removal centers in Van province. The training provided a specialization package to the new cohort of lawyers set to take on legal aid cases. In Turkey, the state-funded legal aid scheme is administered by provincial bar associations. Since the 2000s, the Van bar association has been a strong proponent of extending legal aid services to asylum seekers and migrants. The training covered the basic criteria and procedural tenets of both the international protection procedure for non-Syrian asylum seekers and the temporary protection regime in place for refugees from Syria as well as rules and criteria governing detention and expulsion decisions. In addition to theoretical presentations, the training also featured clinical discussions on effective use of appeal mechanisms.

This training was organized in the framework of a project implemented by RRT with the financial backing of US State Department Bureau for Population Refugees and Migration (PRM). RRT delivers refugee law trainings for lawyers all over Turkey with a particular interest to help strengthen the availability and quality of legal aid services to asylum seekers and detained migrants undergoing expulsion proceedings.

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