Our members

Humanrights.ch is a Swiss non-profit organization founded in 1999 with the main aim of gathering and providing information, raising public awareness, monitoring state action and counselling on human rights issues and the human rights situation in Switzerland. Today, the online-platform www.humanrights.ch is one of the most important independent information-platforms for international human rights in the German-speaking world. Humanrights.ch has particular expertise in coordinating and publishing reports and opinions on the human rights situation in Switzerland and has contributed to a number of reports to UN and Council of Europe monitoring bodies. In collaboration with ENS, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion as well as Terre des hommes Foundation, humanrights.ch has submitted a joint submission on statelessness to the Human Rights Council for the third Universal Periodic Review of Switzerland in 2017. Humanrights.ch further offers a legal aid program for persons in the penal system and coordinates a network for victims of racial discrimination. Finally, humanrights.ch is very well connected as a founding member of the NGO Platform Human Rights Switzerland, a network of over 80 Swiss NGOs working in the field of human rights.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) is an independent human rights organisation. We advocate for the rights of migrants and their families and act as a catalyst for public debate as well as legislative and policy change. The ICI is an Independent Law Centre, which means we can provide legal representation to migrants and their families. We undertake strategic litigation in order to try to effect change and in that context also represent stateless persons in Ireland. We are a non-governmental organisation with charitable status.

International Foundation for Health and Environment Protection "Region Karpat" (the abbreviation in Hungarian is NEEKA) is the international charitable organization, created in 1996 and registered in 1998 as a legal entity in Zakarpattya region, Ukraine. Since that time NEEKA contributed to the development of health protection, medical assistance to the population, social protection for persons with vulnerabilities, and as one of the key direction -free legal aid and partially social assistance to such vulnerable groups as asylum seekers, refugees, stateless persons and Roma people. Our NGO has a well-established cooperation and relationship with government bodies at the local and central levels, as well as with other civil society institutions involved into this scope.

Jo Venkov is a UK qualified barrister with extensive experience of immigration, refugee, human rights, EU and international law. Jo has an LLM in International Law focusing on governance, development and human rights from SOAS University. For over two years Jo was the Oxford Policy Fellow and embedded law and policy adviser to the Government of Ethiopia, working in the field of international environmental law, climate change, protected areas legislation and sustainability. Her current role is as an International Adviser with Government Partnerships International, a UK Government unit, which shares UK Civil Service learning with partner governments overseas using a peer-to-peer approach to problem solving and capacity development. Jo writes a blog about the legal aspect of identity such as statelessness, citizenship, documentation and belonging: www.thetornidentity.org

JustRight Scotland is a leading social justice organisation founded by human rights lawyers in Scotland. It uses the law to defend and extend people’s rights by providing direct legal advice to people who would otherwise struggle to access justice.  JRS operates 4 national centres of legal excellence, which provide the only specialist legal advice in these areas across Scotland: (i) the Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre; (ii) the Scottish Women's Rights Centre; (iii) the Scottish Anti-Trafficking & Exploitation Centre; and (iv) the Scottish Just Law Centre.  Through these centres, it designs social justice collaborations which deliver legal advice in the areas of immigration, gender-based violence, anti-trafficking, and disability and trans discrimination.

Jyothi Kanics has a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and a Masters in International Relations from Yale University. She is currently working as an Associate Member of Child Circle and completing her PhD at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne. Since 1995 she has been active with NGOs and international organisations including UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children and OSCE ODIHR advocating for the rights of migrants in vulnerable situations such as separated children, trafficked persons, undocumented migrants and stateless persons. She continues to provide expert advice to the Council of Europe and OSCE as well as to various foundations and NGOs. She is an active individual member of the European Network on Statelessness in Switzerland and advised the ENS on its #StatelessKids campaign.

Katerina Komita is a lawyer before the Supreme Court of Greece specialized in human rights. From 2011 until 2021, she had been a member of the Legal Unit of the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) specialized in vulnerable cases. In this context, for seven years she had been the coordinator of the multidisciplinary project Prometheus (provision of holistic services for the recovery from the consequences of torture suffered by asylum seekers and refugees on a legal, social, psychological and medical level). She has contacted the ENS research Statelessness Index-Greece [years 2019, 2020 and 2021 (ongoing)]. Additionally, she has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist.

Law Center of Advocates (LCA) is a public association founded in 1997. LCA’s mission is to implement projects and programs aimed at promoting the Rule of Law, judicial independence and respect for human rights in Moldova. It provides specialist legal training and other technical drafting functions. LCA offers legal assistance to all refugees, asylum seekers, beneficiaries of humanitarian protection and stateless persons. LCA is UNHCR’s legal implementing partner in Moldova.

The Liverpool Law Clinic is part of the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool. The Clinic provides a free legal service. Third year law students work on immigration and asylum cases, including the cases of stateless people, under the extremely close supervision of qualified lawyers who are specialists in the field. Staff at the Law Clinic started this work in 2013 and now contribute to policy initiatives at national and international level.

I am a French and New York licensed attorney. I studied one year in South Korea, earned a JD from Sorbonne Law school and completed an LL.M from UCLA. I helped a charity foundation to promote children’s rights in Bangladesh. I lived in Boston for 2 years and assisted an association in the field of sexual violence in civil society and in the incarcerated population. As a probono attorney, I helped underrepresented residents with cognitive impairments to access US citizenship. Finally, I am an active legal fellow of UnitedStateless, an organization promoting human rights for stateless individuals in the US. I intend to join the immigration committee of Lille bar and help people by providing free legal advice but also by supporting them on their journey to access citizenship. I have a strong interest in ethics and justice and wishes to further structural changes to prevent civil rights violations.