2 minute read
A&L Goodbody
A&L GOODBODY
Reuniting Afghan families
A&L Goodbody, Arthur Cox, Matheson and Philip Lee support members of the Afghan community in Ireland with pro bono legal assistance, helping to reunite families
The world watched in horror as heart-breaking scenes played out with desperate Afghans trying to leave Afghanistan at Kabul airport in mid-August 2021 after the Taliban claimed power in the country. By December 2021, an estimated 3 to 4 million people had left Afghanistan, with hundreds of thousands more on the move.
With existing commitments and the small size of their legal teams, the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) and the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) were struggling to meet the enormous demands placed on their services by the new wave of immigration.
The IRC and ICI both operate expert independent law centres providing specialist legal advice in refugee and immigration law, including family reunification. The fall of the Afghan government resulted in several thousand queries from Afghans in Ireland to both organisations seeking support in bringing family members to safety. This involved advising individuals on possibilities and required documentation and submitting visa applications with detailed written legal submission. In the absence of any civil legal aid available to assist in family reunification applications, individuals struggle to navigate the complex application procedures and organisations were unable to provide direct supports in all cases, as needed.
URGENT NEED Reacting to the urgent need, A&L Goodbody, Arthur Cox, Matheson and Philip Lee quickly assembled legal teams to assist the Afghan-Irish community. It meant clients had access to legal representation at a critical, deeply stressful point in time, when the lives of their family members were at significant risk. of law. This resulted in direct client referrals being placed by law centres within a matter of days following the takeover of the Taliban.
The efforts of the law firms involved resulted in greater access to legal representation in discretionary family reunification applications and latterly through the Afghan Admission Programme (AAP) than could otherwise have been reached by the law centres acting alone. While some results of applications are still pending, at
Photo Credit: RTE
The law centres quickly developed training packs for the law firms and delivered specialist training which enabled commercial lawyers to quickly pivot their legal skills to a new area least five families have been reunited through the efforts of this project and applications made for discretionary visas. Without question the result has been life changing for these clients and their family members.
One of the lasting outcomes of the projects has been the ongoing collaboration amongst law firms working together to support unmet legal need in the community; the same law firms are now collaborating on a collective response to meet the legal needs of Ukrainians arriving in Ireland, with three firms seconding a staff member on a part-time basis into the law centres on a weekly basis.
