Working in the crossfire: New report exposes challenges faced by lawyers representing survivors of trafficking
/We have long highlighted the unprecedented pressures on the legal aid system and the lawyers working within it who represent survivors of trafficking and modern slavery. Our recent report, It has destroyed me, revealed that an enormous 90% of respondents had struggled to find a legal aid immigration lawyer in the past year. So we welcome this new report from the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law that exposes the challenges faced by lawyers when representing survivors of trafficking and we invited its author, Dr Samantha Currie, to discuss the main findings of her report below.
Anti-trafficking lawyers are facing huge challenges that impact on their mental wellbeing and the ability of survivors to access justice for the harms they have suffered, according to a new report.
Working in the crossfire
The report, Working in the Crossfire, exposes lawyers caught in the crossfire between the perilous state of the legal aid market; the regressive direction of immigration and asylum law and policy, and consistent use of anti-lawyer rhetoric by politicians in power..
The legal aid sector as a whole is in a precarious state. This research particularly exposes the vulnerability of trafficking case work, stemming from the complex and overlapping nature of the legal issues involved and the specialist nature of the work.
Implications for lawyers
Legal practitioners interviewed for the study are highly committed to their clients and are working additional hours, unpaid, in order to bolster their clients’ opportunity to access rights and challenge negative decisions.
The findings raise serious concerns about the capacity problems that are already entrenched in the legal aid sector to be compounded. Carrying out additional pro bono work on one’s own case files is unsustainable in the longer-term. Moreover, the continual disparaging remarks made by politicians further reduce morale, raising concerns about whether legal aid practitioners remain in the sector.
At a time when Government is rowing back on protections for people who have been trafficked, often justified by arguments which conflate trafficking with ‘illegal’ migration, the loss of experienced legal practitioners from the anti-trafficking space is likely to be particularly harmful for the ability of survivors to access justice.
Implications for survivors
The research also raises pressing concerns about the potential for people who have experienced trafficking to access justice. Access to good quality legal advice and representation is hugely important for this group because of the complex range of legal issues they face.
Clients who have experienced trafficking are impacted by the limited capacity of immigration legal aid lawyers, which is particularly acute in certain regions Even worse, legal aid practitioners who do take on their cases often do not have the necessary expertise and/or capacity to pursue the trafficking-specific elements of their case, even if they can represent them in their immigration or asylum claim.
This leads to legal issues not being pursued, left unresolved and at risk of escalation. It also means that the Government’s unlawful actions and decisions go unchallenged.
The capacity problems in the legal aid sector are creating serious repercussions for survivors. This coupled with the loss of legal protections for those who have experienced trafficking is to place this group in an increasingly vulnerable position, completely removed from a survivor-centred and human rights-based approach.
Samantha Currie, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University
Read more
Working in the crossfire: Executive summary and research report
The report is based on research funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship and draws on interviews carried out with legal practitioners.
A foreword to the report is provided by Dame Sara Thornton DBE QPM, Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Policy at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab (UK) and former UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.
