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Refugee Empowerment and Legal Aid

Christian Pangilinan*

ABSTRACT
Using research gathered while working as a refugee legal aid lawyer in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and drawing literature on community lawyering and legal empowerment, this article reflects on the position of legal aid lawyers in refugee mobilization and empowerment movements. Lawyers may play a significant role in creating awareness among refugees about refugee identity and refugees as rights-bearers. However, the presence of lawyers can also dampen refugees’ own organizing efforts. Instead of serving as their own advocates, refugees may surrender to others the responsibility for advocacy on their behalf, which can lead to refugee disempowerment. This article argues that refugee legal aid lawyers must seek to empower refugees to serve as their own advocates and provides suggestions for fostering such refugee advocacy.

*Christian Pangilinan is a C.V. Starr Lecturer at the Peking University School of Transnational Law. Previously, he was a Legal Fellow and then Interim Legal Services Manager at Asylum Access Tanzania. He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

INTRODUCTION

Refugee legal aid lawyers have made significant contributions in the past decade to refugee protection on the African continent. In Kenya, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya – an organization that provides legal counseling and other services to refugees – played a key role in mobilizing support for the passage of Kenya’s Refugees Act of 2006.[1] In Uganda, the Refugee Law Project advocated relentlessly for refugees’ rights both before and after the passage of the country’s lauded Refugee Act of 2006.[2] In South Africa, despite serious issues relating to refugee protection,[3] some lawyers and NGOs have been able to engage in groundbreaking litigation in domestic courts.[4] Asylum Access Tanzania, where I worked from January 2012 to April 2013, has also made some progress in advocating that refugees be allowed to live outside of refugee camps.[5] These legislative and policy changes have generally been seen as positive developments and were achieved despite major challenges.[6]

In addition to these legislative and policy reform initiatives, refugee legal aid organizations have provided legal aid to thousands of refugees every year. Working in coalitions, refugee legal aid organizations have also accomplished a number of notable achievements. For example, in 2005, refugee legal aid organizations succeeded in pressuring UNHCR to publicly release its procedural standards for refugee status determination (RSD).[7] Refugee advocates had long been critical of UNHCR RSD,[8] and the released procedural standards clearly specified for the first time that asylum seekers had some right to counsel.[9] Some refugee advocates have since formalized their coalitions into advocacy networks including the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Program (SRLAN) and the Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN).[10] Both these networks place advocacy for refugee rights at the core of their work.[11]

Despite legal and policy successes and advocacy for refugees, many of the world’s refugees still face harsh conditions. In Kenya and Uganda, advocacy for urban refugees has led to new legislation. The new legislation has not, however, eliminated continuing protection concerns for urban refugees such as xenophobia and discrimination, harassment by immigration and law enforcement authorities, and lack of access to employment.[12] Some research concerning urban refugees in Southern and Eastern Africa has resulted in the argument that it is of primary importance to consider criteria other than legal status as a determinant of refugees’ success in their countries of residence.[13] Researchers have pointed to other factors such as refugees’ social networks as major determinants of refugees’ survival and success.[14] Such research reinforces the point that legal and policy reform alone are unable to meet all refugees’ needs and raises questions about what refugee legal aid lawyers can do to supplement their existing legal work in order to better assist refugees.

Based on research conducted with Congolese urban refugees in Dar es Salaam, I argue that refugee legal aid providers must adopt strategies aimed at empowering refugees to serve as advocates for themselves and their communities. Focusing on providing traditional legal aid alone, especially that which does not encourage refugee involvement, runs the risk of disempowering refugees by fostering dependence on lawyers to act as their representatives and sole advocates. Drawing on literature on community lawyering and legal empowerment, I argue that refugees have the ability to serve as their own advocates. Lawyers can adopt strategies that also aim to increase refugees’ agency.


REFUGEE LEGAL AID: THE LEGAL ASSISTANCE ONLY MODEL AND BEYOND

Legal aid providers do not come in a “one-size fits all” model. The kinds of legal assistance provided can range from help with client testimonies to strategic or impact litigation – the use of litigation to advance broader social goals that affect a large number of beneficiaries or promote legal reform.[15]

Legal aid providers may help refugees access a country’s or UNHCR’s RSD system by providing information about asylum applications or assisting them with writing their personal and flight histories.[16] They may also provide direct legal representation to refugees, acting as legal representatives before government bodies or UNHCR–or simply accompanying them to government or UNHCR offices.[17] Legal memoranda produced by legal aid providers might argue for the acceptance of a particular claim by providing supporting country of origin information or arguing for specific interpretations of refugee definitions.[18]

In contexts where RSD is unavailable or inaccessible, such as those countries where governments do not conduct RSD, refugee legal aid providers might advocate for refugees’ release from detention or represent refugees in deportation proceedings. Some activities performed by legal aid providers may take place in formal judicial proceedings that are not in a court setting, but are quite similar to judicial proceedings. Others may take place in less formal contexts, such as in administrative proceedings before government officials, informal discussions with officials or in written communications.

In East Africa, legal regimes tend to allow little space for the representation of refugees by counsel in administrative or judicial proceedings. In Kenya, UNHCR conducts RSD, but UNHCR generally restricts refugees’ legal representatives from making short statements at the end of an RSD interview.[19] In Uganda and Tanzania, refugees are not entitled to counsel in government RSD proceedings.[20] In those countries, refugees cannot have their lawyers present when presenting their claims. In such environments, lawyers may feel forced to identify alternative means to serve their clients, either by serving refugees’ non-legal needs or providing innovative legal services outside the RSD context.[21] Refugee legal aid providers in the Global South may aim, among other more traditional legal objectives, to expand legal services and push for policy changes and legal reform. Many legal aid providers in the Global South have expanded their work to include psychosocial counseling, for example.[22] This expansion may reflect the diminished expectation on the part of aid providers that host country governments will or can provide important services to non-nationals, in addition to the perception that refugee clients require psychosocial counseling before they can access legal options.[23]

Thus, while some organizations focus on traditional legal aid,[24] others provide services that are more responsive to local conditions. Moving  away from legal assistance-only models may be a product of restrictive legal environments in the Global South that restrict the effectiveness of legal aid services alone.

Further, not all legal aid work is done by those qualified to serve as or recognized as lawyers, solicitors or barristers in the jurisdiction where they work with refugees. However, the NairobiCode, a voluntary code of ethical conduct, was adopted by several refugee legal aid providers in 2007. This code provides standards for legal training for those working in refugee legal aid. In addition to lawyers, legal aid providers may employ individuals with legal training or paralegals – community-based legal aid providers that provide basic legal aid.[25] The former may include individuals with legal training from the Global North. The latter appear to be less common. For the purpose of this paper, the term “lawyer” includes persons providing legal services who are qualified in a particular jurisdiction, possess education qualifications and are effectively serving as lawyers. I hypothesize that this group is more likely to provide services traditionally provided by fully qualified lawyers and to be perceived as professionals and decision-makers by refugees.


LEGAL AID AND REFUGEES IN DAR ES SALAAM

As part of a broader project on prospects for local integration, a refugee research assistant and I sought feedback on Asylum Access Tanzania’s legal aid work among Congolese urban refugees in Dar es Salaam.  Our aim was to better understand refugee livelihoods and survival strategies, relationships with host communities and the long-term goals of refugees. We conducted ten unstructured interviews with key informant Congolese urban refugees selected for their knowledge of other Congolese refugees, four focus groups with twenty-five refugees, engaged in limited participant observation with three refugees, and surveyed fifty-one Congolese urban refugees.

For many respondents, the legal assistance previously provided to help them obtain some legal status in Dar es Salaam was key to what they asserted was a freer expression of their Congolese identity, their access to more formal employment, and, in rarer cases, their ability to establish businesses.  The research suggests that legal aid can serve critical functions for refugees, indicating that traditional legal aid can be valuable for refugees).

Moreover, legal aid providers like Asylum Access Tanzania can serve the function of both creating awareness of refugee claims and establishing linkages between refugees.[26] For example, one woman explained that it was not until Asylum Access interviewed her previously that she understood that she had a refugee claim:

“I am a refugee here at Asylum Access – known as a refugee. Before I came here, I was a refugee    “non-identifiée.” It was here that I was identified.”[27]

Group workshops and various trainings for refugees were also credited with being important opportunities for refugees to assemble.

“Asylum Access brings us together. Your work is good. Because by gathering at Access, you can meet your longtime missing relatives.” [28]

“I have not seen any problems with Asylum Access. You do well as you assemble us Congolese and teach us many things.” [29]

The comments above, however, do not reflect all refugee perceptions that the provision of legal aid did not address other needs and many called for assistance in obtaining food, housing, access to education for their children and health care:[30]

“. . . I think you should also think beyond legal services. There are other needs that people have. We have people who fled the DRC who never went to school. They don’t know anything about legal services, but they are suffering.” [31]

Others sought assistance that would help improve their livelihoods, from access to starting capital for a business to access to savings schemes to training in particular enterprises.[32] Obtaining legal status remained important for many who did not have some form of legal status and feared being returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo or eventually wanted to seek resettlement.[33] But for others, living in Dar es Salaam imposed other chronic difficulties that legal assistance alone had not been able to address.
Having legal status did not address, for instance, discrimination, the low social perceptions of refugees or fears of exploitation as a result of refugees’ nationality or status—persistent concerns of Congolese refugees in Dar es Salaam. Many of these concerns continue to exist for refugees with legal status.[34] These are in addition to difficulties such as equal access to health services, access to education and access to credit. It is difficult to imagine legal and policy reform alone sufficiently addressing refugees’ marginalization.

A colloquy with Congolese refugees about policy advocacy and efforts to encourage the Tanzanian government to adopt an urban refugee policy that would permit refugees to legally reside with refugee status outside refugee camps depicts a gap between advocacy efforts and refugees’ needs:

Author: If the government had that [urban refugee] policy, would any of you consider applying for that?

Respondent: Yeah so do you think—before answering that question—do you think that an urban refugee policy will be a solution to that kind of discrimination? And people will not have as a matter of policy not accommodating or employing refugees?[35]

Advocates of such a policy may argue that legal and policy reform may be able to address some of the aforementioned problems. Advocates may also argue that many of the hardships faced by refugees stem from the inadequate provision for and enforcement of refugees’ rights. After all, refugees have rights under the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees that, if respected, can serve as the basis for access to education and employment.[36] When policy centered upon refugees is followed or created, one could argue, refugees will in theory be able to access the services they require.

The argument may also be made that fostering rights-consciousness is one of the purposes that lawyers frequently work towards. In Dar es Salaam, one refugee community leader described bringing refugees to Asylum Access specifically to “know their rights as refugees.”[37] In individual cases, lawyers can work with refugees to address issues such refugees being detained.[38] Instances where refugees are not able to exercise those rights, it can be argued, do not mean that legal aid is ineffective, but rather demonstrate that more aid and advocacy are needed.

An approach that relies solely on legal and policy reform, however, is inadequate for at least two reasons. First, with the financial constraints that refugee legal aid providers face, it is simply impossible for legal aid providers to address every individual rights violation that refugees experience. Legal aid providers cannot protect every refugee from discrimination even if law and policy reform are put in place. Second, it is possible that viewing refugees as persons who are in need of lawyers’ assistance may obscure the role that refugees themselves can play in accessing their rights—and that they may be more effective at doing so. By emphasizing the role of lawyers, the role of refugees might be diminished to that of victims who become beneficiaries of their lawyers.

The discussions held with refugees in Dar es Salaam led to frequent statements by refugees that they had no rights or lacked freedom regardless of their legal status.[39] As one refugee described, her sense of long-term marginalization had left her worn out:

I think we are all old. I think we are tired of all this kind of treatment that people are showing to us. We are not well cared for. We are not well treated. At my age I see someone saying, “you just go away, you are just a simple refugee.” There is not even respect for age. And I think we are tired. We are just tired.[40]

Yet in a few instances, refugees described being able to assert rights in a way that was independent of their lawyers. While several refugee women complained about discrimination in the arena of health care, one woman who had trained as a nurse in the DRC recounted how she asserted herself in a health care setting:

When I was about to deliver my daughter, I was asked by a nurse what tribe I was from in Tanzania. This was after she identified my broken Swahili. Since I know medical ethics, I just stopped her and asked for her assistance. She continued to assist me and didn’t ask me any question again.[41]

By drawing on her knowledge of the ethical responsibilities of the nurse, she was able to obtain assistance without reporting the experience of further discrimination. Another refugee spoke about using his legal status as a way of obtaining police assistance after he was the victim of theft.[42] No other refugee respondents, however, even those that had been victims of crime in Dar es Salaam, described going to the police voluntarily. While such accounts are very few in number, they suggest that refugees can serve their own interests without needing intervention from their lawyers.

Advocacy that refugees perform for their own interests has another added value: by representing themselves, they can dispel myths about refugees. During a presentation before a national legal aid organization (one that had assisted organizing focus groups with non-refugees for our study), one of the organization’s legal officers expressed concern about allowing refugees to live outside camps. Allowing such a change, she imagined, could endanger her own safety. My research assistant, who is a registered refugee, had accompanied me to the presentation, but had not introduced himself as a refugee. Pointing to himself, he responded, “Did you think I was a refugee when I came in here?” He emphasized that fear of refugees was often unjustified. Speaking as a refugee, he helped challenge the common perceptions that refugees were violent and to be feared. By speaking as a refugee, he could help refute that perception better than I could.

In our discussions with refugees, some seemed prepared to leave responsibility for advocacy to their lawyers. In a discussion about differences in approach to urban refugees in Uganda and Tanzania, for example, participating refugees called for Asylum Access to “fight for us as they [the Refugee Law Project] did for refugees in Kampala.”[43] One refugee called for the organization to serve as their intermediary in all conversations with government officials.[44] The latter sentiment, of course, is understandable given legitimate fears of the government by foreign nationals, some of whom may lack legal protections.  Avoiding all contact with government officials, however, may also result in diminishing opportunities for refugees to speak on their own behalf.[45]

Another refugee called for Asylum Access to put into effect an urban refugee policy in Tanzania as had been “promised.”[46] Such statements appear to hold lawyers accountable for enacting wide-reaching legal reform, and may also indicate that refugees do not see a role for themselves in that work. “We thought it could take over all of our problems,” one woman explained to me when she talked about Asylum Access opening in Dar es Salaam.[47] Providers of legal aid thus must walk the line between effective advocacy that solves problems and encourages advocacy by refugees themselves without, by introducing and discussing such topics, creating the expectation that legal aid can solve all the problems laid before refuges.


EMPOWERMENT AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Although scholarship exists on relationships between refugees and academic researches that empower the former, little appears to exist about relationships between lawyers or legal aid organizations and refugees that do so.[48] The discussions with refugees I describe above show that there is a need to examine the strategies that legal aid providers are using as well as whether these strategies are serving refugees’ expressed needs in a way that involves them. Two related streams of scholarship concerning lawyers working with the communities they intend to benefit—the literature on “community lawyering” and “legal empowerment”—are particularly useful as starting points for thinking about this relationship and the fostering of refugee empowerment.

The diffusion of community lawyering models of public-interest advocacy—largely emanating from an U.S. civil rights context—has drawn attention to alternative modes of lawyering in which lawyers work within social movements.[49] “Social movements”, for their part, are commonly defined as consisting of collective action with the goal of some social end, such as a redistribution of resources or recognition of a particular social group.[50] Community lawyering models blur lines between practising law and community organizing. Instead of emphasizing lawyers’ ability to alter relationships of power and distributions of resources through litigation, community lawyering models stress that effective solutions to structural inequalities must come from broader societal changes and from encouraging community members to serve as their own advocates.[51] More recently, scholars have stressed partnerships between lawyers and the communities they serve, where legal advocacy complements other strategies for reaching particular outcomes, such as organizing protests or affecting policy decisions made by the local government.[52]

Legal empowerment has been defined as an approach that uses “legal services and related development activities to increase disadvantaged populations’ control over their lives.”[53] Legal empowerment approaches prioritize, among other goals, increasing the agency of community members, focusing attention on the needs of communities rather than top-down strategizing, using both formal and informal tools, and working with all levels of government and community leadership structures.[54] Legal empowerment can differ from traditional legal aid and advocacy by focusing less on litigation and law reform. It is worth considering that litigation and legal reform may be less effective at promoting access to justice on a daily basis as a result of the scarcity of access to lawyers or because the results of law reform and litigation can take time to be actually felt.[55] In practice, legal empowerment approaches may see lawyers working to train community-based paralegals to help community members organize or access basic services like health and education, explain accountability and complaint mechanisms of NGOs and other decision-makers to their beneficiaries, and negotiate with local leaders.[56]

The functions that lawyers might serve in legal empowerment as community lawyers are very similar to roles that are observed in social movements. Legal education programs can bring refugees together to inform refugees of their rights and compare the legal content of those rights to their actual implementation.[57] Education programs also can also prompt participants to think critically together about the institutional structures that affect the lives of refugees.[58] Enabling marginalized people to interrogate such structures can encourage them to take action.[59] In doing so, refugee legal aid providers may be pushing refugees to mobilize around a particular social identity, which can serve as a precursor to mobilization.[60]  Even litigation has a role in social movements as it can serve as a means of validating and crystallizing rights claims.[61]

Some organizations already involve refugees in community organization or provide them with the training to function as paralegals.[62] Refugee paralegals in Egypt provided services that assisted refugees to access RSD, such as transcribing refugees’ flight histories.[63] Community-based paralegals can be a key component of legal empowerment programs, extending access to justice within the communities they serve.[64] In Tanzania, refugee paralegals based in refugee camps aimed to empower refugee women and girls to address sexual and gender-based violence.[65] In the latter case, paralegals’ work encouraged refugee women to bring their claims to law enforcement officers and to press them to take their cases seriously.[66]

It is crucial to take into account, however, the ways in which legal restrictions shape the possibilities for such work with refugee social movements and empowerment. The law not only defines the extent of refugees’ and asylum seekers’ general political rights but it may also play a role in prescribing their places of residence, eligibility for employment, opportunities for education and their opportunities for political or social activism.[67] In Africa, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa was designed with one of its aims being that of controlling refugees’ political activities.[68] It requires refugees to “abstain from any subversive activities” without defining which activities might be deemed “subversive.”[69] One of its stated goals is eliminating the source of “refugee problems” as a “source of friction among many Member States.”[70] Likewise, domestic laws impose limitations on refugee activism. In Tanzania, for example, the restrictive Refugees Act of 1998 restricts refugees’ physical liberty and their freedom of assembly.[71] This narrows the options available for refugees to make their voices heard and creates additional challenges for legal aid providers.[72]

There are at least a few ways by which legal aid providers can contribute to or  themselves be part of social movements by or for refugees. The training of refugee paralegals, the implementation of accountability mechanisms that hold legal aid providers to account in the communities they serve, and involving refugees in developing strategic priorities are all ways for legal aid providers to strengthen refugee voices.[73] Lawyers may provide refugees with training on community organizing tactics, preemptive counseling regarding refugees’ campaigns, and legal support for the formation and registration of refugee organizations or refugee-run institutions. In such collaborations, refugees and lawyers may more closely approach a condition of equality in which lawyers are specifically engaged by refugees for their technical expertise and then supervised by them.[74]

Legal education programs, as described above, can continue to provide refugees with knowledge about their rights. But a focus on empowerment require doing more than providing refugees with knowledge about legal options that they can exercise through their lawyers. Instead, legal education programs can provide refugees with knowledge about legal options and strategies that they can use everyday when accessing healthcare, negotiating transactions, and communicating with authorities. Lawyers can first learn from refugees about the justice issues they face regularly and then begin to understand how some refugees have been able to meaningfully respond to those issues. Such solutions can be incorporated into educational programs, where, for instance, refugees are enlisted to educate other refugees. In this way, education programs can be collaborations that highlight refugee agency.

Bringing refugees together may be valuable in itself. While counseling refugees on an individual basis makes sense in terms of individual legal aid, it does little to assist refugees in the development of social networks amongst one another. Helping refugees develop their own support networks may do more to allow refugees to access effective protection through access to social support.[75] It should be emphasized, however, that the nature of legal empowerment activities will undoubtedly differ from context to context, depending on what refugees find significant and the interventions that might be available. In Dar es Salaam, issues like identification, education and livelihoods appear particularly relevant.

Whether legal empowerment can facilitate the formation of a social movement is more difficult to foresee. Social movements may be understood as “dense informal networks of individuals and organizations” that “cannot be fully represented or controlled by a single entity or organization,” and thus require more than one organization or actor to lead, organize or implement their causes.[76] A movement requires participation by many, and legal empowerment activities for refugees could conceivably be represented by one or a few organizations from which refugees might not necessarily operate independently. In addition, social movements—especially if they are to be based around refugee rights or identity—would also require refugees to mobilize specifically around those issues rather than, for example, another characteristic like ethnicity.[77] As Amisi and Ballard note, in South Africa, Congolese refugees appeared to mobilize as Congolese or as members of specific Congolese ethnic groups rather than as refugees.[78]

If a refugee social movement does arise, lawyers will have to face questions about their role within a social movement. As others have noted, cooperation between lawyers and social activists poses risks for both.[79] For non-lawyers, working with lawyers poses the risk of control or domination by legal professionals.[80] Perceived as experts or as elites, lawyers may be able to take control of and direct advocacy. Legal aid providers that work with refugees and asylum seekers in social movements may find themselves working with individuals who are their current clients. Lawyers may need to take steps to preserve the integrity of the individual lawyer-client relationship, especially the clients’ control over their own case. This may include creating internal divisions between legal counselors and organizers and greater efforts to clarify lawyers’ responsibilities to clients.


CONCLUSION

The increase in the number of refugee legal aid organizations in the Global South represents an opportunity to not only assist refugees through traditional lawyer-client relationships and policy advocacy, but also to empower refugees and contribute to their mobilization. This paper has focused on the ways that lawyers and legal aid organizations have and might, in the future, increase refugee agency and aid refugees in advocating for themselves. Certainly, encounters with refugee legal aid providers should not result in refugees feeling more helpless or vulnerable than they did before, especially given the hardships that refugees have necessarily already had to overcome and their ability to find solutions to these challenges.[81] Instead of assuming that traditional legal aid and policy advocacy are the sole ways that refugee legal aid providers can assist their clients, providers need to consider the ways in which refugees already do serve as their own advocates and work to expand their capacity to do so.

The above image has been provided courtesy of the author (featured center). The photograph depicts a community meeting on 16 April 2013  that was part of the project described within the paper.

[1] Eva Ayiera, Bold advocacy finally strengthens refugee protection in Kenya, 28 Forced Migration Rev. 26, 26-27 (2007).

[2] Jesse Bernstein & Moses Chrispus Okello, To Be or Not To Be: Urban Refugees in Kampala, 24 Refuge 46, 46 (2007).

[3] See, e.g., Loren B. Landau, Protection and Dignity in Johannesburg: Shortcomings of South Africa’s Urban Refugee Policy, 19 J. Refugee Stud. 308 (2006).

[4] South Africa: Reprieve for xenophobia refugees, Mail and Guardian, Aug. 18, 2008, http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-15-reprieve–for–xenophobia–refugees; Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, Press Release, Court finds closure of Cape Town refugee office unlawful, Mar. 19, 2013, http://scalabrini.org.za/wp–content/uploads/2012/11/SCCT–Press–Release–Court–finds–CT–RRO–closure–unlawful.pdf.

[5] Refugees to live outside camps-Official, Pesa Times, Jun. 24, 2013, http://www.pesatimes.com/news/legal-environment/refugees-to-live-outside-camps – .UckLjj5Nuid.  

[6] Emily E. Arnold-Fernandez, Mauro De Lorenzo, Barbara Harrell-Bond & Rachel Levitan, Starting a movement for refugee rights in the Global South: Asylum Access and beyond, in Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities: Changing Our World 39, 40 (Zachary D. Kaufman, ed., 2012).

[8] Michael Alexander, Refugee Status Determination Conducted by UNHCR, 11 Int’l J. Refugee L. 251, 255-56 (1999); Michael Kagan, Frontier Justice: Legal Aid and UNHCR Refugee Status Determination in Egypt, 19 J. Refugee Studies 45, 48 (2006).

[10] Fahamu Refugee Programme, About SRLAN, http://www.refugeelegalaidinformation.org/about-srlan(last accessed July 12, 2013); Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, http://www.aprrn.info/1/, (last accessed Aug. 14, 2013).

[11] Fahamu Refugee Programme, supra n. 10; Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, Who we are, http://www.aprrn.info/1/index.php/about-us/who-we-are(Jan. 21, 2011).

[12] See, e.g., Sara Pavenello, Samir Elhawary & Sara Pantuliano, Hidden and exposed: Urban refugees in Nairobi, Kenya 7 (Humanitarian Policy Grp. Working Paper, 2010); Abdi Nur, I am a Refugee, and I Have Rights, Refugees Int’l Blog, Apr. 10, 2013, http://refugeesinternational.org/blog/i-am-refugee-and-i-have-rights.

[13] See, e.g., Loren B. Landau & Marguerite Duponchel, Laws, Policies, or Social Position? Capabilities and Determinants of Effective Protection in Four African Cities, 24 J. Refugee Stud. 2, 2-3 (2011) (arguing that “legal status is [not] a reliable predictor of effective protection”).

[14] Id.

[15] See Abram Chayes, The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1281, 1302 (1976); Lawyers for Human Rights, Strategic Litigation Unit, http://www.lhr.org.za/programme/strategic-litigation-unit(last accessed July 13, 2013).

[16] Kagan, supra n. 8, at 45, 55-56.

[17] Kagan, supra n. 8, at 49-51.

[18] Kagan, supra n. 8, at 49-51.

[20] Uganda Refugees Act 2006 s.13; Tanzania Refugees Act 1998 s.9.

[21] For example, Asylum Access Tanzania worked to enable more than a hundred self-settled refugees in Dar es Salaam to obtain legal status through immigration channels rather than through RSD. Asylum Access, Forging a New Path for Urban Refugees, Feb. 2012, http://asylumaccess.org/AsylumAccess/news–and–updates/archives/winter-2012-a–new–path–to–legal–status–for–urban–refugees–in–tanzania; Michael Kagan, AMERA-Egypy, Flagship fo the Refugee Legal Aid Movement, Struggles for Financial Survival, RSDwatch, Mar. 22, 2013, http://rsdwatch.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/amera-egypt-flagship-of-the-refugee-legal-aid-movement-struggles-for-financial-survival/.

[22] Refugee Law Project, http://www.refugeelawproject.org/(last accessed July 13, 2013); AMERA, http://www.amera-egypt.org/(last accessed July 13, 2013); Frontiers Ruwad Association, http://www.frontiersruwad.org/(last accessed July 13, 2013);

[23] Refugee Law Project, Legal Aid & Counselling Annual Report 2005, http://www.refugeelawproject.org/strategy/LACannualreport05.pdf 7-8 (last accessed July 13, 2013).

[24] Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre, What we do, http://www.hkrac.org/what-we-do/ (last accessed July 13, 2013); Asylum Access, Our Model, http://asylumaccess.org/AsylumAccess/who-we-are/our-model(last accessed July 13, 2013); Lawyers for Human Rights, Refugee and Migrants Rights Programme Additional Information, http://www.lhr.org.za/programme/refugee-and-migrant-rights-programme-rmrp/information(last accessed July 13, 2013).

[25] Kagan, supra note 8, at 56.

[26] Surveys, NN/SURV/31, Mar. 19, 2013; NN/SURV/34, Mar. 22, 2013; Interview, CP/CL/01, Jan. 28, 2013.

[27] Interview, CP/CL/09, Mar. 12, 2013.

[28] Survey, NN/SURV/34, Mar. 22, 2013.

[29] Survey, NN/SURV/31, Mar. 19, 2013.

[30] E.g., Surveys, NN/SURV/02, Feb. 19, 2013; NN/SURV/04, Feb. 21, 2013; NN/SURV/13, Mar. 1, 2013.

[31] Focus Group with Refugee Women, Feb. 8, 2013.

[32] Surveys, NN/SURV/20, Mar. 8, 2013; NN/SURV/23, Mar. 12, 2013; NN/SURV/26, Mar. 13, 2013; NN/SURV/42, Apr. 5, 2013; NN/SURV/44, Apr. 5, 2013; Interview, CP/PO/01, Feb. 13, 2013.

[33] Surveys, NN/SURV/11, Feb. 28, 2013; NN/SURV/16, Mar. 5, 2013; NN/SURV/25, Mar. 14, 2013; Focus Group with Refugee Men, Feb. 5, 2013.

[34] Focus Group with Refugee Women, Feb. 15, 2013; Focus Group with Refugee Men, Mar. 12, 2013.

[35] Focus Group with Refugee Men, Mar. 12, 2013.

[36] United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, arts. 17-19, 22, 189 U.N.T.S. 150.

[37] Interview CP/CL/02, Jan. 30, 2013.

[38] Interview CP/CL/03, Feb. 2, 2013.

[39] Surveys, NN/SURV/25, Mar. 14, 2013; NN/SURV/26, Mar. 14, 2013; NN/SURV/27, Mar. 15, 2013; NN/SURV/37, Mar. 26, 2013; NN/SURV/40, Apr. 4, 2013.

[40] Focus Group with Refugee Women, Feb. 15, 2013.

[41] Survey, NN/SURV/38, Mar. 28, 2013.

[42] Interview, CP/CL/30, Feb. 7, 2013.

[43] Focus Group with Refugee Women, Feb. 15, 2013.

[44] Id.

[45] For examples of refugee mobilization, see Elizabeth Holzer, A Case Study of Political Failure in a Refugee Camp, 25 J. Refugee Studies 257 (2012); Paula Worbly, Lessons learned from UNHCR’s involvement in the Guatemala refugee repatriation and reintegration programme (1987-1999) (1999), available at http://www.alnap.org/resource/2951.aspx.

[46] Survey, NN/SURV/16, Mar. 5, 2013.

[47] Interview, CP/CL/03, Feb. 2, 2013.

[48] E.g., Eileen Pittaway, Linda Bartolomei & Richard Hugman, ‘Stop Stealing Our Stories’: The Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Groups, 2 J. Human Rights Practice 229 (2010).

[49] See Scott L. Cummings & Ingrid V. Early, A Critical Reflection on Law and Organizing, 48 UCLA L. Rev. 443, 446-47 (2001); Thomas Hilbink, The Profession, the Grassroots and the Elite: Cause Lawyering for Civil Rights and Freedom in the Direct Action Era, in Cause Lawyers and Social Movements 60 (Austin Sarat & Stuart A. Scheingold eds., 2006).

[50] Nina A. Kohn, The Lawyer’s Role in Fostering an Elder Rights Movement, 37 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 49, 56 (2010); William Eskridge, Channeling: Identity-Based Social Movements and Public Law, 150 U. Pa. L. Rev. 419, 423-25 (2001); Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Elites, Social Movements, and the Law: The Case of Affirmative Action, 105 Colum. L. Rev. 1436, 1439 (2005).

[51] Cummings & Early, supra note 49, at 447 (“In general, this new framework offers a vision of social change directed by community-based organizations in which lawyers are ancillary to the definition and implementation of a transformative agenda.”).

[52] Scott L. Cummings & Ingrid V. Eagly, Review Essay, After Public Interest Law, 100 Nw. Univ. L. Rev. 1251, 1275 (2006).

[53] Stephen Golub, Beyond Rule of Law Orthodoxy: The Legal Empowerment Alternative 3 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Rule of Law Series Working Paper No. 41, 2003).

[54] Id. at 25-26; Vivek Maru, Between Law and Society Paralegals and the Provision of Justice Services in Sierra Leone and Worldwide, 31 Yale J. Int’l L. 427, 464 (2006); Meena Jagannath, Nicole Philips & Jeena Shah, A Rights-Based Approach to Lawyering: Legal Empowerment as an Alternative to Legal Aid in Post-Disaster Haiti, 10 Nw. J. Int’l Hum. Rts. 7, 8 (2011).

[55] Vivek Maru, Allies Unknown: Social Accountability and Legal Empowerment, 12 Health and Hum. Rts. Practice 83, 84 (2010).

[56] See supra n. 54.

[57] See, e.g., Refugee Law Project, Information Sessions, http://www.refugeelawproject.org/information_sessions.php(last accessed July 16, 2013); Asylum Access, Ecuador, http://asylumaccess.org/AsylumAccess/who-we-are/ecuador(Apr. 16, 2013).

[58] Focus Group with Refugee Men, Feb. 5, 2013.

[59] Tiernan Mennen, The mystery of legal empowerment: livelihoods and community justice in Bolivia, in Legal Empowerment: Practitioners’ Perspectives 64, 66 (Stephen Golub, ed., 2010).

[60] Cf. Eskridge, supra n. 50, at 425.

[61] Sandra A. Levitsky, To Lead with Law: Reassessing the Influence of Legal Advocacy Organizations in Social Movements, in Cause Lawyers and Social Movements 146 (“Litigation can raise expectations, spark indignation and hope, and stimulate a rights consciousness among movement constituents and supporters; it can help legitimize a movement’s goals and values, publicize the movement’s causes, and provide leverage in bargaining with powerful elites.”).

[62] Kagan, supra n. 8, at 49-50; Juliet Kaira Chibuta, Women’s Legal Aid Centre (WLAC) Final Evaluation of the “Access to Justice for Refugee Women and Girls” Project in Tanzania 2008-2011, http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/IntevalOneworldaction.pdf.

[63] Kagan, supra n. 8, at 49-50;

[64] Maru, supra n. 54 at 466-67.

[65] Chibuta, supra n. 62.

[66] Chibuta, supra n. 62, at 42-43.

[67] Jeff Crisp, No solutions in sight: the problem of protracted refugee situations in Africa 11-13 (UNHCR Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit Working Paper No. 75, 2003).

[68] George Okoth-Obbo, Thirty Years On: A Legal Review of the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention, 8 Afr. Y.B. Int’l L. 3, 57-64 (2000).

[69] 1969 Convention, Sept. 10, 1969, art. 3(1), 1001 U.N.T.S. 45.

[70] 1969 Convention, Preamble s.3.

[71] Khoti Kamanga, The (Tanzania) Refugees Act of 1998: Some Legal and Policy Implications, 18 J. Refugee Studies 100, 110-11 (2005).

[72] Chibuta, supra n. 62, at 44.

[73] See Maru, supra n. 54, at 442.

[74] Scott L. Cummings, Law in the Labor Movement’s Challenge to Wal-Mart: A Case Study of the Inglewood Site Fight, 95 Cal. L. Rev. 1927, 1966 (2007).

[75] Landau & Duponchel, supra n. 13, at 13.

[76] Kohn, supra n. 50, at 56-57.

[77] See Baruti Amisi & Richard Ballard, In the Absence of Citizenship: Congolese refugee struggle and organisation in South Africa (2005), available at http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Amisi Ballard Refugees Research Report.pdf.

[78] Id.

[79] E.g., Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, Introduction, What Cause Lawyers Do For, and To, Social Movements, in Cause Lawyers and Social Movements 2-3.

[80] Levitsky, supra n. 61; Cummings & Early, supra n. 49, at 457-58.

[81] Nondo Nobel Bwami, It Takes Courage to be a Refugee, Realizing Rights, July 6, 2012, http://realizingrights.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/it-takes-courage-to-be-a-refugee/.

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