The Refugee Legal Aid Project (RLAP), run by the University’s School of Law, is in the running for the Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community category in this year’s Times Higher Education Awards.

The RLAP, a collaboration between Bedfordshire Refugee & Asylum Seeker Support (BRASS) and the University’s Centre for Research in Law (CRiL), launched in 2013 in response to the cuts to legal aid that excluded family reunion cases from publicly funded legal assistance, making it extremely hard for refugees to be reunited with their families. 

The student and graduate volunteers involved in the RLAP support refugees with their applications to UK Visas & Immigration that allow close family members (spouses, children and siblings) to leave war-torn countries and join their loved ones in the UK.

Dr Silvia Borelli, who heads up the project, said: “All of us in the RLAP team are delighted that the project has been shortlisted for this prestigious award. This is yet further recognition of the commitment of our student volunteers, and the vital importance of their work in assisting refugees to be reunited with their loved ones. 

“Given the unavailability of legal aid for family reunion applications, and the pressure that the current situation is placing on charities all over the country, there is an ever increasing need for volunteer pro bono projects of this type. We hope that RLAP can serve as the model for the successful establishment of similar projects at other institutions.”

So far, nearly 100 individuals, many of them young children, have received clearance to come to the UK and have been reunited with refugees assisted by the project.

One of the clients assisted by the RLAP team said: “The project helped me to be reunited with my family again. I was feeling so lonely without my family – I was crying every day. But now I can laugh, there are no tears on my face and I have found happiness again.”

The work of the RLAP was also recognised in 2015 when it was awarded the Lord-Lieutenant’s Community Engagement Award