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1 The HUMAN RIGHTS & MIGRATION LAW CLINIC in Turin, a joint program between the Faculties of Law of the Universities of Turin and Eastern Piedmont in Alessandria and the International University College of Turin Academic year I. Introduction The enforcement of human rights especially in the area of migration is an important and ongoing challenge for all parts of society at global, regional, national and local levels. Well- trained and responsible lawyers and other professionals can play an important role within this process. The Human Rights & Migration Law Clinic (HRMLC) in Turin established a new style of legal education in the Piedmont region by encouraging students through experiential learning learning by doing for academic credit to emphasise the sensitisation of students as future professionals to the problems of social justice and to foster a sense of social responsibility. Furthermore, the HRMLC Program strives to offer research and legal assistance to under- represented individuals within Turin, complementing the already existing support provided by local organisations working locally for the benefit of migrants. This paper aims to give an overview about the HRMLC of CLINICAL EXPERIENCE FROM HAMID (CLINICAL STUDENT 2011/2012 FROM SIERRA LEONE): The clinical program has been very interesting, educative and revealing. It has significantly changed my perception of how much protection is been offered to immigrants by national laws in Europe and the ECHR. I m amazed to discover that immigrants rights are being protected significantly by most European constitutions. Even though some of these laws are not obtained in practice, as I ve also discovered in the clinical program, the de facto amount of protection immigrants receive surpass my anticipations based on the popular perceptions in Africa. These laws however, do pose a lot of challenges for governments as immigrants can sometimes take advantage of these laws and tend to be highly manipulative. As I ve discovered in my activities at the Sportello, immigrants have a whole lot of identical fake stories they tell each time, mostly leaving courts with no option but to judge in their favour. And these stories are mostly taught by the very traffickers of these immigrants, and hence a huge barrier to the fight against trafficking. I ve also discovered that national politics has a very significant role to play in the welfare of immigrants, especially by effecting budget cuts on immigrant assistant programs. The current Piedmonts Governor, for example, totally ended grants to most Sportelli in the region including Turin, and this has been a significant limitation on the Sportello s ability to finance their operations and fully assist immigrants. 1

2 However, on a general basis, concerns for and protection of the rights of immigrants is increasing in the EU, and this of course has a significant impact on the development of remittance recipient countries. II. Background The HRMLC has been established by the International University College of Turin (IUC). The IUC 1 stands for the interdisciplinary and comparative study of law, economics and finance, in response to the clear lack of a transnational set of normative principles capable of controlling economic processes. The general program specifically looks to engage students and young scholars from all over the world with special emphasis on the periphery, or 'global south', with leading figures in economics, law and the humanities. The IUC emphasises the relationship between theory and practice, favoring actual experience and empirical findings over the black letter law. Given to this emphasis on experience over theory, it became natural to pursue the establishment of a Clinical Program. The HRMLC has been established in cooperation with the Faculties of Law of the Universities of Turin and the Eastern Piedmont University in Alessandria. They form together with the IUC the institutional partners of the HRMLC. The HRMLC is open to students coming from those universities, and the program enhances the cooperation between these institutions by using the synergies of their different activities, competences and structures for the benefit of the students and the local migrant community in Turin. The three institutions play a key role for the clinic management by connecting the clinical program to the actual curriculum of the universities, by choosing a motivated and competent group of clinical students, by defining the clinical priorities, by supervising the clinical activities and by determining and supporting the areas of research. Another important partnership has been signed with the Associazione Studi Giuridici sull' Immigrazione (ASGI), which has proven expertise in the field of migration law in Italy. ASGI with its associated and specialised lawyers plays a key role for the clinic through advising, supporting and supervising the clinical activities at all stages. The clinical program is designed partially under the external placement model, where students will be placed at the legal aid offices (Sportello Assistenza Immigrati) of Italian Trade Unions and local Non- Profit Organizations working in the field of migration in Turin. For this purpose, the HRMLC has signed cooperation agreements with the Sportelli Assistenza Immigrati of the Camera del Lavoro di Torino (CGIL), Confederazione Italiana Sindacati dei Lavoratori (CSIL), Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), Ufficio per la Pastorale dei Migranti and Gruppo Abele. Since January 2012 clinical program students have been attending these organisations as part of their training. In relation to the research component of the clinical program, a number of partnerships have been envisaged with the following organizations: European Training Foundation (ETF), Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull'immigrazione (FIERI), International Training Centre of the ILO (ITC- ILO) and VIS- Volontariato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo. The clinical involvements of these organizations vary from the support of research activities (e.g. access to libraries and data banks) up to shared research projects. III. Description of the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic in Turin The HRMLC is an educational program and it is addressed to students as future professionals who are studying law at the law schools of the Universities of Turin and Eastern Piedmont University in Alessandria or admitted to the interdisciplinary master program of the IUC. Thus, this program involves a group of 1 A number of renown intellectuals and scholars from around the world serve on the faculty and advisory board of the IUC, including: Guido Calabresi (former Dean of the Yale School of Law), David Gerber (Chicago Kent School of Law), Josef Halevi (University of Sydney), Duncan Kennedy (Harvard Law School), Ugo Mattei (University of Torino & University of California, Hastings), Stefano Rodotà (co- author of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights), Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate), Gunther Teubner (Frankfurt School), Jan Toporowski (SOAS, University of London), Gustavo Zagrebelsky (Emeritus President of the Italian Constitutional Court). The IUC has established partnerships with institutions, universities and organisations from around the globe. 2

3 selected Italian and international students who are highly qualified and motivated and who wish to contribute to improving the access to justice of immigrants coming to and living in the local Turin area. In fall of the current academic year 2011/2012, sixteen clinical students participated in the clinical program. Six students came from the University of Turin, two from the Eastern Piedmont University and eight from the IUC. The current clinical students come from eight different places in the world (Russia, Ukraine, India, Palestine, Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Australia and Italy) and together they speak more than twelve languages. Concerning the clinical activities, the HRMLC within the 2011/2012 academic year has implemented the following main activities: course work, practical activity and research. The first important element is the course work, which provides the clinical students during the entire program with the necessary theoretical background for the clinical activities in the areas of International, European and Italian Migration Law, of Legal Writing and of Human Rights. All elements of the course work try to provide the clinical students with a practical view into the issue by focussing on using particularly active teaching methods, such as case analyses and simulations. This course work is furthermore accompanied by a Clinical Seminar Series where professionals who are active in the field of migration are invited to speak to clinical students and provide insight into the practical problems related to legal practice in the field of human rights and migration. Finally, the practical activity is the key part of the clinical program and it has been designed in a format, which offers two different types of activities: (1) Within the first activity, clinical students are working on real cases in the field of migration law. The students get in contact with their cases through weekly engagement in a legal aid office ( Sportelli Assistenza Immigrati ) for migrants of local Non- Profit Organizations / Trade Unions. The students are working in couples (one international IUC student and one Italian student). They generally support the sportello with statements on specific legal questions. When the need for an attorney s intervention is identified for an individual case, the clinical students prepare and connect those legal cases to the individual attorney. For the legal case, the clinical students assist the attorney in handling the case: by collecting all necessary facts, meeting with clients and preparing the legal solutions under the supervision of the sportello staff and the attorney involved. Over the last year, clinical students have come across a variety of migration law problems and individual cases, touching issues such as: A Senegalese national who was confronted with the revocation of his long- term permit to stay only for the reason that he, while having fulfilled all necessary tax obligations, did not paid his social security contribution in Italy. This individual case turned out to be a general praxis pursued by Italian local administrations with the aim of revoking the permit to stay to foreign citizens legally working and residing in Italy (two couples of clinical students came across the same problem in different circumstances). A Nigerian national who applied for asylum in Italy for religious reasons after her conversion to Catholicism. A group of five hundred migrants who were confronted with the revocation of their permit to stay for the reason of using fake documents. The migrants however were themselves victims of a fake lawyer in Turin who produced the falsified documents (counterfeit work contracts in Italy etc.) and presented these documents to the Italian authorities on behalf of the migrants. A Moroccan national who has been living in Italy for more than fourteen years and had established strong family ties (e.g. children born in Italy), who has been denied his right to remain in Italy for various reasons. 3

4 CLINICAL EXPERIENCE FROM PETRO (CLINICAL STUDENT 2011/2012 FROM UKRAINE): As a participant of an International University College of Turin LLM Clinical Program on Human Rights and migration law I would highly recommend this state- of- the- art method of teaching for all these professors who want to make their classes both efficient and interesting for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the course work is provided by an expert in International and European Migration Law and a practicing Italian lawyer. It is to say, that each student has a unique opportunity to explore any academic or practical issue easily from two professionals in their field. Secondly, not only are the classes taught in standard classroom- conditions, but also, after having studied some theoretical and practical elements, all students are offered to try themselves in field work, namely participate in the work of Italian Sportelli and acquire first- hand experience from these people who are in need of legal assistance and who are providing them with it, in particular Sportello personnel and lawyers. And last but not least, as famous saying reads: "it is better to see once, than to hear one hundred times", yet in the current case the students can both hear and see how Italian and International Migration Law works, what significantly makes a studying process more interesting and understandable. (2) Within the second activity, a group of clinical students are involved in a practical legal analysis related to the Centres for Identification and Expulsion (CIE) in Turin. The CIE research project began in January It was motivated by the fact that according to a number of associations, institutions and organisations at local, national, European and international level the current praxis of administrative detention of irregular migrants in CIEs raises numerous concerns in Italy (and elsewhere in Europe). In particular, it is often claimed that the inconsistency between the explicit and implicit aims of CIEs seems to produce in general terms a source for abuses, inefficiency, disease and violations of human rights. This became true especially in 2011 and is of particular relevance to Turin. In real terms, the clinical activities consisted of studying the legal framework (European and national level) of CIEs, screening the presence of detained migrants in the period January May 2012, verifying the judicial protection of detained migrants and analysing the detention conditions. The objective was to investigate and analyse whether the treatment of immigration detainees in Turin s CIE meets Italian, European and international human rights standards. The project investigated both systemic and individual problems faced by detainees, their families and people who either work in CIE or have contact with CIE in a professional or voluntary capacity. The study consisted in a qualitative survey (mainly interviews) aimed at collecting and presenting holistic information about experiences of immigration detention in Turin. Therefore interviews were targeted at a broad cross- section of subjects, such as: current and former detainees, their family members, lawyers, journalists, religious personnel, CIE staff, medical personnel, government officials, judges and so on. From this survey a number of relevant issues have emerged, such as: the problem of understanding what CIE is; the effects of detention on family relationships and on detainees physical and mental health; CIE detention as a further deprivation of freedom for former convicts; the controversial role of embassies and consulates in the identification procedure; and the lack of activities and the daily hurdles suffered by migrants inside CIE. In addition to these detention- related problems, after examining the individual stories shared by interviewed migrants it became clear that administrative detention is being used in both Turin and possibly throughout Italy as the general rule, rather than the exception. EU Directive 115/2008/EC stipulates that State parties should, where possible, prioritise the voluntary return of immigrants who are staying illegally. Moreover, where possible States should adopt alternative measures in order to avoid immigration detention. In theory Italian national legislation is required to have incorporated EU 4

5 Directive 115/2008/EC, however the findings from our clinical research project have revealed that in practice the Italian authorities do not appear to be implementing the Directive appropriately 2. CLINICAL EXPERIENCE FROM ABIGAEL (CLINICAL STUDENT 2011/2012 FROM AUSTRALIA) Telephoning detainees inside CIE immigration detention has been a particularly emotional experience, which has taught me a lot about professionalism for researchers and lawyers. I m really thank- full to detainees for sharing their personal stories with us. I hope that our final report can manage to do justice to those stories and provide an avenue for all participants voices to be heard. As a group, we have discussed research and legal ethics with our IUC project coordinator and our supervising Italian lawyer, in order to work through some of the difficult issues that we ve faced. I have interviewed a few detainees inside CIE who have spoken about prior self- harm or who were on hunger strikes at the time that we spoke to them. As a researcher I some- times felt guilty for asking information of people in a rather one- sided relationship where I am on the other end of the phone in a comfortable office listening to stories that seem a world away, yet are in fact happening in the same city. We endeavoured to conduct our research with empathy and neutrality, whilst also being aware that it was important to set realistic expectations because there are limits in how much we could actually do to help the detainees who are currently inside CIE. We really hope our report will in the long- term help to advocate for substantive and positive change. However, it has been sad to realise that it is not possible to directly help many of the detainees who are currently locked inside CIE. Nevertheless, during the research there have been situations where I think that we have been able to already make a positive contribution (e.g. we helped an eighteen year- old asylum seeker from Libya to get legal representation). It s been really nice to have the opportunity to work with clinical students from University of Turin and University of Alexandria. On an educational level, they have been able to help us a lot to understand Italian law, and to practice our Italian. Perhaps we ve also been able to help them to practice English and compare legal procedure, legal aid and immigration law in other countries. I ve really enjoyed working together as a close team. The third pillar of the HRMLC is a research component, which will be implemented by way of continuing research partnerships. From the next academic year (2012/2013) onwards, it is foreseen that second year students who have completed the first year clinical program and who have been awarded an IUC research fellowship will cooperate with partnering research institutes and assist them in their research activities in the field of migration. IV. Conclusion It can be highlighted that the HRMLC was seen from all involved parties (students, law faculties, contacted stakeholders and partners) as a stimulating project, which is worthwhile to support. The positive reactions were mainly based on the following points: (1) Through the HRMLC students see a window into the true operation of the law, as a dynamic integration of theory and practice complementary to the classroom curriculum. It is an opportunity to gain experience and exposure to real- world legal problems that migrants in Italy are confronted with, in their social, cultural, and economic dimensions. (2) Universities mainly see an advantage in the fact that such a program could contribute to a change of paradigm in the field of legal education in the Piedmont region and (together with similar projects, such as the clinical program in Brescia) in Italy. These programs could lead towards a more practical approach to legal education, which at the same time aims to foster a sense of social responsibility in future professionals. 2 The final report of the CIE Research Project Betwixt and between: Turin s CIE is available on the IUC website ( ). 5

6 (3) Contacted partners and stakeholders working in the field of human rights and migration see the HRMLC as an opportunity to involve universities in education and research activities in the field of migration and human rights. Their purpose is to find new models and ways to cope with migration- related issues in their social, cultural, economic and legal dimensions. These positive reactions were and still are very encouraging. They represent the lively dynamic which has proven to be necessary in order to build this multi- faceted program, which depends on the involvement of quite a number of different institutions and organisations in Piedmont. In the future, the IUC and its partners will develop the HRMLC further. In addition to the already existing practical activities (involvement of clinical students in real cases through their weekly commitment in a legal aid office Sportelli Assistenza Immigrati ), it is planned that a group of clinical students will be involved in preparing a strategic litigation case in the field of migration. This strategic litigation case will most probably try to challenge the use of administrative detention for irregular migrants as a general principle rather than as ultima ratio. The HRMLC also intends to continue the much- needed monitoring of detention conditions inside Turin CIE, in order to uncover human rights violations and increase public awareness. Furthermore the IUC seeks to engage the HRMLC in transnational/european clinical projects. This is the reason why the IUC is facilitating and supporting the initiative to create a European Network for Clinical Legal Education. Such a network could become a tool and a platform to foster clinical developments in Europe (through materials and experience sharing, exchanges for clinical teachers, organising of conferences etc.). It may also help to increase awareness about the advantages of clinical legal education, both at the European and national level. The European Network for Clinical Legal Education s first meeting took place at the IUC in Turin at the beginning of June During this first meeting the participants was agreed to pursue this initiative further and to officially establish this European network as a European organisation for Clinical Legal Education in Ulrich Stege IUC Clinical Program Coordinator Lecturer on International and European Migration Law 6