Areas of work.
1- Access to Justice
Access to Justice is mostly about providing paralegal advice for refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants, including on issues of LGBTI and gender rights. Particular attention is paid to issues of :
• Legal Documentation
• Access to education for children of refugees and asylum seekers
• Labour rights including unfair dismissal, labour disputes, access to CCM
A and Labour Courts, and accessing other legal rights NGOS
2- Rights Advocacy
Rights advocacy is primarily about informing, educating and engaging local communities about asylum-seeker and refugee rights through workshops, social events like soccer tournaments and engagements with stakeholders like Home Affairs and the local SAPS. Where it assists in community-level work, VAC will also engage government institutions, especially SAPS, and the departments of Home Affairs, Education and Health around issues of administration, corruption and upholding human dignity. Lastly, VAC will engage the public through the media in favour of refugee rights in particular and common humanity general.
3- Education and research
Central to VAC’s education project will be offering English-classes in communities. Research will include monitoring the political mood of communities in collaboration with the authorities to assist in preventing xenophobic incidents. Linked to this, VAC will collaborate with institutions of higher learning around research into issues of refugee rights and community-building, including the Department of Political Studies at University of the Western Cape, and the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York in the United Kingdom.
