Medical Legal Partnerships Supporting Asylum Seekers
Many resources within a community can come together effectively to support those seeking asylum. As reported in the Providence Journal on March 31st, in Providence, Rhode Island a new project has been formed between Brown University’s Medical School and local immigration practitioners. The project, Human Rights Asylum Clinic, pairs medical students participating in the school’s Human Rights Clinic with lawyers whose clients are in need of documentation of injuries related to domestic violence and other forms of torture inflicted in their home country. Dr. Anne DeGroot noted: “Confronting abuse can be emotionally taxing. The human-rights clinic brings together volunteer doctors, students and lawyers to assist what they view as a vulnerable and underserved community. They build a network of support for one another.”
The Brown University clinic is one of a few that have been organized by medical students, the first being Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights founded in 2010 and located in New York City. The clinics collaborate with Physicians for Human Rights which refers clients to the clinics nationwide. The clients must be working with lawyers as well as with the medical clinics. Clients who seek asylum and have the assistance of Physicians for Human Rights have an 89% success rate, according to a 2007 study. This contrasts with only a 37% success rate for those who do not have the organization’s assistance.
The medical school experience suggests that medical-legal partnerships between law school based human rights clinics and local medical schools may provide an unusually successful combination of resources to assist asylum seekers.