4 December 2015
ECRE member, the Irish Refugee Council (IRC), has launched a manual on providing early legal advice (ELA) to persons seeking international protection. With ELA helping people in the asylum procedure to be identified and recognised at the earliest opportunity, this manual provides practical guidance to legal practitioners on how such advice can be applied.
Exploring the key stages of ELA, the manual outlines how to enable applicants to voice the full extent of their application, how to assist the applicant with considering what evidence might be appropriate to support the application and how to assist the decision maker by providing legal submissions that outline the protection needs of the client in the context of the state’s international legal obligations.
IRC hopes that this manual will be used as a practical guide across Europe, as well as in Ireland, as the benefits of ELA in a protection process have been linked in a number of studies to improved efficiency, decision-making and fairness.
For further information:
- Irish Refugee Council, A manual on providing early legal advice to persons seeking protection, November 2015
This article appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 4 December 2015. You can subscribe to the Weekly Bulletin here.