Nerea – Legal Intern in Chios and Athens

My time at Equal Rights Beyond Borders, at the Vial Refugee Camp and the Athenas Women Center, has had a profound impact on me personally and continues to shape my professional perspective to this day in my current role at the Federal Government Commissioner for Integration.

I witnessed first-hand what it means when an increasing number of formal procedures prevent people from having their protection needs assessed; when reception policies are designed not to welcome people but to deter them; when access to legal advice and justice is not a given but something that has to be fought for every day; when children in Europe play amidst piles of rubbish; when “false” stories emerge out of fear and the instinct to survive; when women and queer people are safe nowhere; and when people are forced to survive the unimaginable, doing so in ways that are themselves unimaginable and incomprehensible.

Especially in my work today, when I encounter narratives that only make sense on a piece of paper and in an imagined world, the faces and stories from Chios come to mind: the children in the camp playing among piles of rubbish; unaccompanied minors housed in wooden boxes referred to as “Safe Spaces”; a little girl whose hips repeatedly break because she struggles to walk and the ground is covered in broken glass and tent wires; a young man who sleeps outside on the street every night because he fears becoming a victim of violence inside the camp; an older man who was tortured with electric shocks to his genital area and whom the asylum authorities ask to undress; women and children who do not go to the toilet at night because they are afraid of being raped; a pregnant woman with a high-risk pregnancy who is airlifted by helicopter from the tent camp on the very day she gives birth, only to be returned there immediately afterwards; the many family members who have been separated and the failed family reunification cases; and the waiting.

Waiting for drinking water, food, medical examinations, sanitary products, the asylum interview, clothing distribution, and the ferry to the mainland. Often, the day consists of standing in queues and waiting, for months and even years.

My time at Equal Rights Beyond Borders helped me bring the law to life and fill legal paragraphs with human stories. I try, in my own small way, to do justice to those stories.

Anne – Legal Intern in Athens, July–September 2024

I worked as a legal trainee at Equal Rights Beyond Borders in the Athens office in the summer of 2024, just a few weeks after the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum came into force.

The Pact elevated several aspects of asylum procedures that were already common practice in Greece at the time to the level of EU-wide standards. This was deeply troubling then and remains so today. Working in Greece made it very clear to me what this new system means for people seeking protection.

People who came to us for support frequently reported on their experiences in the Closed Controlled Access Centres (CCACs) on the Greek islands. These experiences were often characterised by degrading living conditions and dehumanising treatment by the officials working there. The fact that detaining asylum seekers in such prison-like centres is now set to become the standard across Europe contradicts the EU’s fundamental values and basic human rights.

What stayed with me were, on the one hand, the accounts from the CCACs and, on the other, the strong network of dedicated organisations, groups and community centres working to ensure that people seeking protection could arrive safely and claim their rights.

I still draw a great deal of motivation from this experience when confronting the worrying developments we are witnessing today. Especially because the new EU Pact makes the application of asylum law even more complicated in some respects and introduces severe restrictions on the right to asylum, fighting for access to justice for everyone is more important than ever.

To quote Equal Rights: Now more than ever!

Ann Katrin – Legal Intern in Athens, 2022

For me, my time at Equal Rights was shaped above all by the people and the many meaningful encounters I had. During my very first week as a volunteer in Athens, the annual team meeting took place. This gave me the special opportunity to meet colleagues from all four offices. I was welcomed with great warmth and quickly realised that Equal Rights is a community of thoughtful and dedicated people who are highly motivated to defend the rights of people seeking protection.

Before my time in Athens, I had already volunteered in Germany, providing legal advice to asylum seekers. However, working in Greece made me understand in a different way the political and legal pressure faced by both people seeking protection and the organisations supporting them. In 2022, the legal framework for NGOs in Greece was further restricted through tighter regulations governing the NGO registry and the increasing criminalisation of aid workers and human rights defenders. I was impressed that my colleagues did not allow these developments to discourage them, but instead worked together to develop strategies that enabled them to continue their work as effectively as possible under difficult conditions.

What particularly convinced me was the combination of individual legal counselling and structural advocacy. I was able to support clients in family reunification procedures, participate in counselling sessions and conduct research on country-of-origin information. At the same time, I gained insights into strategic litigation before the European Court of Human Rights, which can bring about change for many people beyond the individual case. Experiences from working directly at Europe's external borders also informed reports and legal and policy advocacy.

I experienced the ability to bring these different levels together – individual support, strategic litigation, research and documentation, and political engagement – as one of Equal Rights' particular strengths.

My time at Equal Rights strengthened my commitment to working at the intersection of migration law and human rights protection in the long term. It also made me acutely aware of the gap that can exist between legal guarantees and their actual implementation. Rights only have an impact when people have access to legal advice and courts, and when human rights violations are consistently documented and brought to public attention.

My experiences in Greece therefore left me not only with motivation but also with frustration at the political inaction in the face of systematic human rights violations at Europe's external borders. After returning home, I wrote a detailed letter to members of the German Bundestag, describing the structural problems I had witnessed and calling for political action. The fact that I received hardly any response was disillusioning, but it did not diminish my desire to remain engaged.

My time in Athens also influenced my subsequent professional path. I went on to deepen my knowledge through an LL.M. in International Human Rights Protection and, inspired by my colleagues at Equal Rights, focused my master's thesis on restitution for victims of illegal pushbacks. I then continued working in asylum procedure counselling and migration law.

What has stayed with me above all is the conviction that individual legal support and structural change must go hand in hand, as well as the memory of a team that works towards exactly that with great perseverance and humanity.