About Us
Vision & Mission
Objectives & Activities
History
Charity Number
Vision
For all people to enjoy their rights under European law.
Mission
To promote awareness of European law rights and assist marginalised individuals and those in vulnerable circumstances to assert those rights
Strategic Objectives
- To promote awareness of the rights protected by European law which are not well known or understood, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, but also European Union legislation governing the rights of individuals.
- To protect the rights of low-income EU migrants and their family members under EU free movement law, in particular their right to enter and remain in their host state and their right to equal treatment with respect to matters such as working conditions and access to social security and social assistance benefits.
- To assist individuals who would otherwise have difficulty securing expert advice and adequate representation in cases involving the application of the European Convention on Human Rights.
- To enable other legal advisers to provide effective help to marginalised individuals who need to assert their rights under European law.
- To work with those responsible for implementing rights guaranteed under European law to ensure that such implementation is effective.
- To train young lawyers from all areas of Europe and beyond to use European law in assisting marginalised individuals in their future careers.
Activities
- Providing second-tier advice to the legal representatives of marginalised individuals who are asserting their rights under European law.*
- Advising individuals and their family members in coordination, where appropriate, with other advisers on their rights under European law and putting them in touch with other advisers in the voluntary sector for matters on which we are unable to assist.*
- Representing applicants and assisting applicants’ representatives before the European Court of Human Rights and other international bodies.
- Training lawyers, judges, and state officials on individual rights under European law.
- Writing reports, petitions, and third-party interventions on issues relating to the implementation of European rights guarantees.
- Hosting a year-round internship programme with the participation of law students and lawyers from all over Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.
*While we work on a broad range of issues in this respect, we have a particular interest in using European law, where possible, to assist in the following areas:
- The promotion of human rights in Central and Eastern Europe (with a specific focus on the Balkans).
- The rights of those subject to expulsion, include their right to be free from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and their right to family life.
- The rights of foreign prisoners.
- The human rights of parents and children in family proceedings.
- The rights to enter, remain, and access benefits for EEA citizens and their family members, including in particular:
- The rights of domestic violence victims who are themselves or are family members of EEA nationals.
- The rights of victims of human trafficking.
- The rights of workers, particularly in situations of vulnerable employment or forced labour
- The special needs of women migrants.
- The special needs of LGBT migrants.
- Access to homelessness services.
- Access to healthcare.
History
The AIRE Centre came into existence in May 1993. It was first conceived earlier that year by Nuala Mole and Ron Hooghiemstra when Nuala was the Director, and Ron the Legal Officer, at another NGO, Interights. The idea was that the new organisation would provide information and advice on the rights people enjoy under both European Community law, as it then was, and the European Convention on Human Rights
In the summer of 1993, Deborah Greenberg, from the Human Rights Program at Columbia Law School in New York, sent us an intern, Marisa Lau. She believed that the experience would be intellectually enriching if materially Spartan. Marisa became the first of more than 200 volunteers who have given their services over the past decade who have been instrumental in allowing the AIRE Centre to work on its diverse and important projects.
Such work began in earnest when, in 1994, we began to carry out projects for the Commission of the European Communities. They included promoting awareness of European human rights standards in Albania and Moldova with the support of the PHARE and TACIS Democracy Initiatives. Our special links with those two countries are still very much alive today. We also worked for some years in partnership with Penal Reform International on their projects in the region and have more recently become involved again in the present reform of the European Prison Rules. These activities were the genesis of our work in Central and Eastern Europe, which has expanded and evolved over the years.
In 1996/97 we compiled all the data for the second edition of Richard Plender’s Basic Documents on International Migration Law. Maria-Teresa Gil-Bazo and Frances Nicholson completed the Herculean task of tracking down all the ratifications, reservations and derogations for this 900-page tome. In 1997, 2000, and again in 2010 we updated the Council of Europe’s Human Rights File on Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as providing speakers for many conferences and seminars on the subject to mark the 50th Anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees.
Vladimir Djeric, then an LL.M student at the University of Michigan Law School and now adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro, spent a summer with us in 1996 and established our first links with the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. The Belgrade Centre kept the flame of democracy alive in the dark years of the Yugoslav conflicts and continues to play a key role in the strengthening of the rule of law in the region. After Vladimir left he introduced us to Biljana Njagulj (now Braithwaite). Over the past twelve years her tireless energy and charm have developed the AIRE Centre’s extensive programme in the Balkans.
Between 1998 when the Human Rights Act was passed and 2 October 2000 when it came into force we were engaged in a whirlwind programme, providing training on the ECHR both for the Judicial Studies Board and for private practitioners. Both Stephen Whale and Benjamin Narain made significant contributions to the work undertaken by Nuala and Navi to deliver this training. Our views are regularly sought by both UK Government Departments and Parliamentary Committees on proposed changes in legislation or constitutional reforms, or by the Council of Europe or the European Commission on various comparable matters. We warmly welcome these open consultation exercises while desperately wishing for more time and resources with which to respond to them.
Our work in Central and Eastern Europe rapidly expanded from 2000. A programme of AIRE Centre seminars for judges in Se
rbia and Montenegro was augmented to include Council of Europe training for local and international judges in Kosovo. This was complemented in 2001-2002 by a project for the European Agency for Reconstruction reviewing the training needs of the Montenegrin judiciary and designing curricula for future use.
The Brixton office was our base until - in November 2001- Dawson Cornwell solicitors, with whom we had worked on family law matters, facilitated our move to Red Lion Square. We now occupy a very conveniently located garret in the former home of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and William Morris. During this time, Robert Harris joined the team as an IT volunteer and he continues to be an enormous help to us to this day- working wonders with the limited IT resources and equipment!
As the years passed our caseload increased and by the time we reviewed the provision of our advice service at the end of 2002 we had opened five thousand files and dealt with many more telephone and written enquiries. We are still fully occupied in providing advice although we now primarily provide advice to legal practitioners and other advice workers rather than to the general public. We continue to litigate an increasingly varied range of issues before the Strasbourg Court and remain involved in litigation before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. We have an ambitious and varied programme in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, particularly in the Balkans.
By the end of 1997 we had been commended in the Philip Jones Awards presented by London Boroughs Grants as the Most Welcoming Organisation. We are especially proud of this as we were nominated by appreciative clients. In 1998 we were Human Rights Organisation of the year at the Liberty/ Law Society Gazette Awards. In 2001 the Director was voted the Human Rights Lawyer of the Year by the Liberty/ Law Society Gazette/ Justice Awards for the AIRE Centre’s work at the European Court and in the Balkans. In 2005 she was awarded the College of Europe's Alumus of the Year prize in recognition of her work with the AIRE Centre.
Today the Centre has six staff members and eight to ten volunteers at any time. We have taken over 100 cases to the European Court of Human Rights, and are involved in approximately thirty cases before the European Court of Human Rights, as well as two cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union and we respond in writing to approximately 600 requests for legal advice each year.
Charity Number
Charity Number: 1090336 (registered on 30th January 2002).
Company Limited by Guarantee: No. 2824400 (registered on 1st June 1993).
