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Community Education & Advocacy Projects
Regional Refugee and Immigration Legal Support
Community Migration Agents Project
Democracy and Peacework for Refugees
RefLaw Australia
Regional Refugee and Immigration
Legal Support
Commenced March 2005. Funded by Legal Aid Queensland
The project involves the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service (RAILS) partnering with Legal Aid Queensland (LAQ)
to provide key refugee and immigration education and advice to disadvantaged
people in regional communities, while researching and developing
an information technology model for self-help legal support to regional
communities.
Utilizing community access networks, regional information sessions
will be held through LAQ community access points and workers to:
- promote and develop the network,
- provide legal advice and support while mapping the needs
of community and organizations
- developing material and a best practice model for providing
appropriate regional refugee and humanitarian immigration advice
including development and placement of material on RAILS new website
The project will link clients and workers into an accessible community-friendly
website.
 More
information about this project.
Community Migration Agents
Project
Commenced January 2005. Funded by Queensland Law Society
The project aims to create opportunities for members of refugee
and disadvantaged migrant communities to become registered pro
bono (voluntary) migration agents (to provide voluntary work
within their communities, and more broadly. RAILS will:
- Provide training and support to upskill community members in
migration/refugee law and practice to enable them to undertake
the Migration Agents Professional Knowledge Entrance Exam (MAPKEE)
- Support the process of gaining registration as a not for profit
Migration Agent
- Provide free yearly continuing professional development training
(Migration Agents are required to complete 10 Continuing Professional
Development points each year)
- Provide Mentoring and practice feedback forums.
- Assist with other resource support such as forms and interview
rooms.
More
information about this project
Democracy and Peacework for
Refugees
Commenced January 2004. Funded by Brisbane City Council
Democracy is about participating in building the world in which
we want to live. Peacework is about building peace within ourselves
and in the world around us.
The Democracy and Peacework for Refugees project aims to promote
peacebuilding among refugee groups through respect and knowledge
about law, culture, human rights and responsibilities, and conflict
resolution.
The first part of the project involves developing and holding dialogue
sessions with refugees, support workers and people from the broader
Australian community, to build cross-cultural understanding about
the reality of democratic, human and cultural rights in Australia,
in comparison to the refugees' countries of origin.
The second part builds from this and develops peace-building skills
and projects in relation to real issues raised by the refugees emerging
from the dialogue sessions. The final part develops material to
inform further capacity building and a larger framework for other
groups in the future.
RefLaw Australia
Commencement mid 2005. Funded by Don Chipp Foundation
RefLaw Australia is a web-based, legal database comprising
Australian Federal Court and High Court jurisprudence. The database
contains all decisions since 4 February 2003 (when the High Court’s
landmark decision of Plaintiff S157 v MIMIA was handed down) as
well as significant decisions made prior to that date.
The purpose of RefLaw Australia is to act as a quick, efficient
and accurate research tool for refugee lawyers and advocates
Why do we need RefLaw Australia?
Refugee lawyers and advocates need to quickly and accurately locate
relevant case law when preparing cases, whether at primary, Tribunal
or litigation level. Publicly available search engines such as AustLII
cannot accommodate the level of search specificity often required.
Although there are publications which contain updates of refugee
cases (such as the Refugee Tribunal Bulletin or the Migration
Review Journal), they deal only with significant cases, and
are not available in a format which enables searching on key words,
or case profiling.
Additionally, unless dedicated research is carried out, there is
currently no way to identify or highlight trends or systemic issues
in court cases. This often leaves advocates relying on anecdotal
evidence, unsupported by statistics or empirical evidence.
Project partners
RAILS is partnering with the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing
House (QPILCH) in this project. QPILCH is a community based assessment
and referral centre for public interest litigation undertaken on
a pro bono basis. Since mid-2003,
the two services have worked together on the “Refugee and
Immigration Legal Support (RAILS) Project”, with the goal
of increasing private sector participation in refugee cases on a
pro bono basis. RefLaw Australia is an initiative of the
RAILS Project.
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