ASGI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 Roma and non Roma persons working with Roma people will be selected through an open call at national level. They can be employed staff (full/part time) or volunteers, they can be experienced in working on documentation or interested in starting to work on this specific issue.

The call will be sent to the many contacts that ASGI, Associazione 21 luglio and Fondazione Romanì have in many different cities, in Northern, Central and Southern Italy.

In order to maximize the impact of the project, participants will be selected giving priority to athose working with the highest number of Roma families. 

10 Roma young activists who are attending courses run by Fondazione Romanì and Associazione 21 luglio will also be included in the group. 

A 2-days residential workshop will be organized. 

The workshop will address: 

the role of paralegals; 

the legal framework concerning the access of undocumented and stateless Roma migrants to a legal status: procedures for the recognition of the stateless status, issue of a residence permit on humanitarian or other ground, acquisition of Italian citizenship, acquisition of the nationality of the Western Balkans States of origin; 

successful methodologies used by ASGI and other NGOs to promote the access of undocumented and stateless migrants to a legal status; 

how to address individual documentation cases and how to record the problems, the activities undertaken etc.; 

advocacy strategies at national and local level to promote the access of undocumented and stateless Roma migrants to a legal status;

community education: how to increase the competences and capacity of Roma people and communities to solve their problems about documentation autonomously, so that they do not become dependent on paralegals.

The workshop will be organized with the approach of „non formal education“. Participants will be required to participate in a very active way, sharing their experiences, competences and ideas. Methodologies such as role-playing, case studies etc. will be used. 

One of the outuput of the workshop will be the production, by the participants, of information materials that can be distributed in Roma communities to spread information on how to get a legal status, translated in Romanès and in Serbo-Croatian. 

The initial training will be shorter than in other community-based paralegals programs, because the project „OUT OF LIMBO“ does not address in general all the legal problems that Roma communities and individuals face (e.g. criminal proceedings, evictions and property rights, adoption of Roma children etc.) but is specifically focused on issues related to documentation. Moreover, since the paralegals will not be paid by the project budget and most of them are poorly paid or even volunteers, they probably would not be available to attend a longer training. 

Participants will be required to identify 3 cases of undocumented or stateless migrants of Roma origin they commit to support in their access to a legal status, during the 10 months between the first and the second workshop – e.g. assisting the concerned person in filing an application for a residence permit on humanitarian grounds or an application for the recognition of the stateless status through the administrative procedure; supporting him or her in obtaining the birth certificate or the passport from the State of origin etc. 

ASGI’s lawyers will provide legal advice to the paralegals in these 45 individual documentation cases, through the online platform (see below) or in person. 

Each lawyer will support and supervise 2-3 paralegals. The Project Coordinator will ensure supervision of the wole group of paralegals at national level.

For each person supported, the paralegals will be required to record an individual case file, reporting all the problems met, the actions undertaken to solve them etc. Every month they will send the updated case files to the Project Coordinator and the lawyer supervising them.

Since the paralegals will not be paid by the project budget for this work, we are not able to ask them a more significant commitment. Nonetheless, it must be considered that at least some ot the paralegals that will be involved will be practitioners that work on individual documentation cases in their ordinary work, supporting much more than 3 cases in 10 months: as a consequence, the competences they will acquire within the project will have an impact on a higher number of cases. Estimating that, during the project period, each paralegal may support in his or her ordinary work and with the support of local lawyers not involved in the project, on average 10 persons, 150 persons are estimated to be supported besides the 45 cases recorded. Regarding these around 150 cases, paralegals will not be required to fill out individual case files and to update them on a monthly basis, since it would require too much effort: they will just summarize their stories and the activities undertaken in a short report.

The 10 Roma young activists who in most cases have no work experience and as consequence will not be able to take the responsibility of an individual documentation case, will work together with an experienced paralegal or will be involved in different activities (e.g. they might cooperate in implementing the Media strategy with Associazione 21 luglio). 

Participants will also be invited to submit a project proposal for a small intervention at local level. This local project might include for example community education activities, advocacy activities targeted to local authorities or Consulates or the employment of a Roma cultural mediator. 

The Project Coordinator and the Steering Committee will assess the proposals received and a small budget (5.000 euro=6.6557 USD) will be allocated to the selected project.

The selected NGO/person will be required to report monthly on the implementation of the small local intervention and will be supported by the project’s staff (Project Coordinator and Lawyers) in addressing the problems that might arise.

The aims of this activity are a) to stimulate the creativity and active participation of the paralegals involved, encouraging them in planning activities that are useful to advance the rights of the Roma communities and individuals they work with; b) to make a concrete exercise in project planning; c) to implement in a local context activities that go beyond the individual documentation case, that will be reported and discussed during the intermediate and final workshop.

Following the workshop, an online platform will be established where questions by paralegals and legal advice provided by ASGI’s lawyers will be shared (unless the paralegal explicitly requires not to share it) and where paralegals will be able to exchange experiences with colleagues on the problems met and the successful strategies identified.

This methodology has proven very effective in previous projects run by ASGI aimed at legal empowerment of cultural mediators(1).

A second 2 days-long residential workshop will be organized. 

Participants will be required to share their experience in individual documentation cases, presenting the problems met and the successful strategies identified.

Also the results of the small local intervention funded and any other actions (advocacy, community education activities etc.) promoted by the participants will be presented and discussed.

A specific session of the workshop will address fundraising opportunities for project proposals on this issue, in order to ensure sustainability.

Finally, we will discuss advocacy activities at national level (policy papers to be sent to Policy targets, final conference etc.) and the role of the Network of paralegals within these activities. 

Among the individual cases supported or reported by the paralegals, three or four cases particularly relevant will be selected for strategic litigations. 

ASGI and Associazione 21 luglio‘s lawyers will litigate the selected cases before national or international courts.

Taking into consideration the conclusions of the expert meeting on “Statelessness in Italy: cases, procedures, proposals for reform and strategic litigation”, organized by OSJI and ASGI in October 2012, as well as the conclusions and recommendations of the research “IN THE SUN - Survey on the phenomenon of statelessness among Roma communities living in Italy”(abstract) presented by CIR in 2013, we intend to seek the following case profiles:

a) stateless person whose application for statelessness recognition under the administrative procedure has been rejected due to the lack of legal residence > aim of the strategic litigation: Court decision stating that legal residence is not a necessary requirement for the recognition of the stateless status under the administrative procedure;

b) stateless person whose application for statelessness recognition has been rejected because they “may acquire” the nationality of the family’s State of origin, even though the acquisition of that nationaliy would require more than administrative formalities > aim of the strategic litigation: Court decision stating that a person that is not recognized as citizen by any State is stateless even in case he or she may aquire a nationality;

c) person born in Italy and residing in Italy from birth to the age of 18, whose application for the recognition of the Italian citizneship (Law 91/92, art. 4, par. 2) has been rejected due to the lack of a residence permit/registered residence for some years during that period > aim of the strategic litigation: Court decision stating that the lack of a residence permit/registered residence even for a long period does not prevent from acquiring the Italian nationality;

d) person born or residing for decades in Italy, who cannot be returned according to art. 8 of the ECHR, whose application for a residence permit for humanitarian reason has been rejected, e.g. due to his or her criminal records or the lack of passport > aim of the strategic litigation: Court decision stating that in these cases a residence permit for humanitarian reason must be issued, irrespective of criminal records or lack of passport.

The case profiles sought, however, will be discussed, taking into consideration also the priorities indicated by the paralegals.

In order to ensure that such decisions will have a wider impact beyond the particular applicants, we will seek cases that can be litigated before the highest courts of appeal (Consiglio di Stato and Corte di Cassazione), the Constitutional Court, or the European Court on Human Rights. 

A short and very communicative final report will be published (the report’s framework and style will be similar to that of the report „Persons at risk of statelessness in Serbia“ published by the NGO Praxis.

The report will 

- explain how policies, regulations and practices prevent undocumented and stateless Roma people from getting a legal status, reporting the concrete stories of some of the individual documentation cases supported;

- report the main results of the project activities, in particular analyzing the methodology of legal empowerment and community-based paralegals;

- propose some recommendations on the changes needed in policies, regulations, enforcement of the law and practices, at local, national and international level in order to promote the access of undocumented and stateless Roma people to a legal status.

The report will be presented in a final conference and will be widely disseminated online. 

A final conference will be organized in Rome.

The costs of the paralegals’ participation in the conference will be covered by the project. 

Representatives of the Ministry of Interior, a judge of the Court of Rome and the President of the Commission for Human Rights, will be invited as speakers.

One of the paralegals, preferably of Roma origin, will participate in the conference as a speaker, representing the National Network of paralegals: he or she will present the results of the project and some of the recommendations on the changes needed in policies, regulations, enforcement of the law and practices, to promote the access of undocumented and stateless Roma people to a legal status.

After the conference, a final 1 day-long workshop will be organized. 

A final evaluation of the results, successes and failures of the project will be carried out through a group discussion.

We will also discuss with all the participants whether they are interested in continuing the Network of paralegals. If this is the case, the management of the Network and its relations with ASGI, Associazione 21 luglio and Fondazione Romanì will be discussed. 

Finally, we will discuss which activities can be carried out on a voluntary basis by the participants and which ones need funding, and we will explore opportunities for funding.

During the whole project, a media strategy will be developed, in order to raise awareness on the rights violations that undocumented Roma migrants suffer as well as the need to change the concerned policies, regulations and practices:

Press releases will be produced, relations will be kept with local and national journalists, the project messages will be positioned on the media. 

Through regular posts about the project themes on the social media (Facebook and Twitter), we aim at raising awareness on the contents of the project, stimulating the users’ engagement and participation, promoting debates and reflections among/from web users.

A short video reporting some powerful stories will be produced and widely disseminated. 

The information materials produced, news about the project and the final report will be spread also through the websites and the e-newsletters of the associations involved in the project.

A summary of the report in English will be disseminated to international networks dealing with Roma rights, statelessness and undocumented migrants (European Network on Statelessness, PICUM etc.) so that it can feed advocacy activities at EU and international level.