Description

The Győr Refugee Legal Clinic was established in February 1997 through a partnership between the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) and ELTE Law Faculty in Győr (now Széchenyi University). The creation of this clinic was undertaken as part of a COLPI (Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute) initiative to create several clinics. At the time of the clinic's creation, the Ministry of Interior granted clinic students access to the police, border police and refugee reception institutions through a formal agreement between HHC and the Ministry of Interior.
The clinic extended its scope to asylum law and institutionalized its relationship with UNHCR in spring 1998. The clinic also works in close cooperation with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) and with UNHCR.UNHCR provides financial support for theoretical education, trainings and conferences organized by the HHC. Gabor Juhasz, a local attorney (who was also a former student of the legal clinic and is now a member of HHC's country-wide network of lawyers) served as the supervisor of the case management of the clinic.

Education is provided to students by professor Imre Papp, who is also the professor of the ELTE Budapest legal clinic. The legal clinic is a non-obligatory course in the university and students receive one credit per semester for participating in the clinic after their second year.
The Clinic has its own office in the building of the University; its infrastructure is supplied by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. Currently the Clinic has 11 members, all of them students of the University completing their second, third or fourth year.
A significant number of the graduates of the clinic have sought and found employment in the asylum field: some still provide free legal assistance to asylum-seekers, while others took government positions related to asylum law.

Clinic Activities

The mission of the Győr Legal Clinic is to help asylum seekers in the community shelter of Győr to either obtain refugee status or find an appropriate solution to their aliens policy issue.

The clinic works in close cooperation with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and with UNHCR. UNHCR provides support in the form of theoretical education, trainings and conferences, while the Hungarian Helsinki Committee provides the services of Gabor Juhasz, a local attorney.

Students in the Győr clinic are involved in asylum procedures from the beginning, as they are often responsible for selecting cases and writing the first petitions. Apart from the provision of free legal representation, asylum-seekers are also given legal information and counselling. Students also work on researching country of origin issues, and usually one student handles about five cases per semester. Győr clinic students regularly work with clients from the Győr community shelter, a facility that has been closed until the new Asylum and Aliens Act of Hungary came into force on 1 January, 2002, and have been often involved in helping clients to obtain the documents necessary to temporarily leave the shelter during the asylum procedure.

The Legal Clinic works in close cooperation with the legal clinics of Budapest and Debrecen. Relations with legal clinics from other countries started last summer at the Fifth Annual International Asylum Law Moot Court and student seminar in Budapest. Since then, email contact with many of the clinics of the region has been continuous.

Two or three times in a semester the members of the clinic participate in trainings and conferences where we get to meet other clinics, professors, experts, attorneys and representatives of the authorities. Occasionally, foreign clinics are invited as well; therefore our international relations have been getting more and more intensive.

Contact information

Hédervári utca 25.
H-9026 Győr
HUNGARY
Tel.: +36 96 613 505
Fax: +36 96 503 47

Email:legalclinic.gyor@freemail.hu
imredoki@freemail.hu