Description
The project addresses the need of monitoring the court proceedings of refugees and asylum seekers to identify shortcomings and good practices. The project aims at casting light on the criminal and administrative cases involving refugees, evaluating practices, making recommendations to the institutions and identifying good practices to be disseminated and multiplied. First, a conference will be held with the stakeholders to raise their awareness of the project. Second, administrative and criminal proceedings of refugees will be monitored and the findings will be filled in evaluation forms. Finally, an analytical report will be drafted providing reliable feedback to the courts. In addition, a project website will be kept as a data source. The project will benefit the two target groups of refugees and asylum seekers and institutions/organizations involved in refugee cases by improving the quality of justice and providing better protection of the refugee rights.
Summary of project results
The project addressed the need of monitoring the court proceedings of refugees and asylum seekers to identify shortcomings and good practices. The most important result is the identified weaknesses of the court proceedings in refugee cases and the concrete solutions found to overcome those weaknesses. The development and regular updating of the project’s website (
http://abm-bg.org) yet in the first phase of the project provided a platform for the presentation of its results to a large number of stakeholders and organizations. Monitoring was conducted of 204 hearings in refugee cases in the Administrative Court of the City of Sofia and the Supreme Administrative Court, comparing to the originally envisaged 170 monitoring visits. The analysis of the legislation and the case law, on the one hand, and the summary of the questionnaires, on the other, allowed the preparation of Analytical Report, which contains a clear and accurate picture of the court proceedings in refugee cases, recommendations were made for changes in the legislation and the practice. The report is available on the project’s web page.
Summary of bilateral results