Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic

The Human Rights Law Clinic has been operating since the academic year 2014/2015. The Clinic, which is incorporated in the curriculum of the Faculty of Law and Criminology. The course offers both projects in Dutch and in English. The course has a dual objective:

• To provide Master students with intensive, hands-on, practical education in the form of Clinical Legal Education in the field of human rights and migration law; and

• To fulfil a central social justice role by contributing to the effective protection of human rights, in particular those of disadvantaged persons and groups.

To achieve the dual objective of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic, the Human Rights Centre cooperates with a number of partners from civil society that work on human rights and migration law issues. On a yearly basis, organisations can submit potential projects, out of which the Centre selects the most suitable ones, in light of the Clinic’s objectives of education and social justice promotion. The selected projects are then distributed among the students, who – divided in small groups – work under supervision of legal clinic coaches on these real life case files. Their responsibilities include contacting the partner, analysing the problem in human rights terms and doing intensive research to delivering the required end product to the partner.

Legal Clinic Team

The students perform these tasks under the intense educational supervision of nine clinicians: Annelies Nachtergaele, Brecht De Schutter, Hanne Vanwalle, Rachida Lamrabet, Imane El Morabet and Saïla Ouald-Chaib. This teams consists of both academics and law practitioners with hand-on experience in the field.

The Legal Clinic is supervised by prof. dr. Eva Brems (lecturer), prof. dr. Ellen Desmet (co-lecturer) and dr. Saïla Ouald-Chaib (co-lecturer and coordinator)

End Product

The students’ main aim is to deliver a comprehensive end product of high quality to the partners, in the form of a written report, legal advice, brochure in layman’s terms, drafts of written submissions to courts, third party interventions, etc. These end products are then used by the partner to fulfil their societal role in the promotion and protection of human rights, for instance through strategic litigation, lobby work, and information and advocacy campaigns.

Contact details: eva.brems@ugent.be; ellen.desmet@ugent.be; saila.oualdchaib@UGent.be    

Website:

https://hrc.ugent.be/clinic/human-rights-and-migration-law-clinic/

Additional remarks: Please consult the relevant Ufora webpage for more in-depth information regarding the projects for the academic year 2021-2022!