News & Events

Justice Centre Hong Kong was glad to learn that one of our refugee clients, Claudine (not her real name), was recently granted Permission to Work by the Immigration Department on a discretionary basis.

Do you want to learn how to use the law to make a difference? Would you like to get hands-on experience of assisting people seeking asylum in Hong Kong? If so, apply for the Hong Kong Human Rights Law Clinic 2020 today!

Amidst the pandemic, Justice Centre Hong Kong were proud to help our clients and their loved ones celebrate Eid. On this very special occasion we were delighted to prepare and distribute dozens of food bags, which included many favourite ingredients, for what we hope was a delicious iftar.

Justice Centre Hong Kong is pleased to sign the Racial Diversity & Inclusion Charter For Employers upon the invitation of the Equal Opportunities Commission to reiterate our support for racial diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Justice Centre Hong Kong was pleased to learn that one of our refugee clients, Alice (not her real name), was recently granted Permission to Work by the Immigration Department on a discretionary basis.

Let us all be reminded on International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia #IDAHOT that no one in the world should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hand of the person they love, or being who they want to be 🌈

We are pleased to announce the successful appeal of two of our refugee clients from the Horn of Africa. After 7 years of uncertainty, they have both been granted protection in Hong Kong.

Justice Centre Hong Kong joins the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s calls upon States to protect children’s rights amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A big thank you to our pro bono partner Latham & Watkins for their detailed legal research support on the topic of habeas corpus in the context of immigration detention.

Today, on the International Day for the Right to Truth concerning Human Rights, Justice Centre Hong Kong echoes the importance of the right to the truth.

In these challenging times, Hong Kong must stand by refugees, asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, migrant domestic workers, ethnic minorities and other marginalised communities against racism, prejudice, intolerance and xenophobia.

A big thank you to our pro bono partner Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for helping us approach one of their preferred professional translation service providers SDL plc. They agreed, on a pro bono basis, to translate our client feedback forms into our clients’ 11 most used languages. They did an excellent job, with a four-day turnaround time.

Justice Centre Hong Kong join the UN General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande’s call on everyone everywhere, to defend gender equality together as a necessity in upholding human rights.

With the help of our pro bono partner Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, we have lodged separate complaints to the Office of the Ombudsman in February 2020 over the HKSAR Government's failure to offer data on the Unified Screening Mechanism.

We were delighted to learn of the recent successful resettlement of one of our refugee clients from the Horn of Africa to the United States. Prolonged by policy changes, our client waited 6 years after the substantiation of his asylum claim for the resettlement process to be completed.

A new vision… The 2020 Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize is now accepting submissions.

ZN v. Secretary for Justice, Director of Immigration, Commissioner of Police, Commissioner for Labour [2019] is a landmark case that examined the interpretation of Article 4 of the Bill of Rights Ordinance (“BOR4”) and whether it included human trafficking. The key issues were whether the protection derived from BOR4 covers human trafficking and whether a positive duty existed for the government to enact a specific criminal offence against human trafficking. The Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) delivered its written judgement last Friday afternoon (January 10).

We were delighted to learn of the successful appeal of one of our refugee clients from Yemen.

Join Justice Centre Hong Kong and the Hong Kong refugee community on the 25th August 2019 to cycle through the streets of Hong Kong.

This years winners were announced on 8th December 2018 at the Hive Spring where the public exhibition ran until Friday 11th January.

Refugees,  asylum seekers and torture claimants  constitute  less  than one percent of Hong Kong’s (HK) population. However, the law imposes extensive restrictions on their right to work.

Justice Centre Hong Kong calls on Hong Kong to adopt comprehensive legislation to combat human trafficking.

On June 7, about three weeks before the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the Hong Kong Legislature invited residents to speak with them at the “Legislative Council Complex” (‘LegCo Complex’) about the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (‘UNCAT’).

We present an original poem by Saleban, a refugee from an African country and a graduate of our Voices for Protection advocacy traineeship.

To celebrate World Refugee Day on 20 June, we are proud to present Rock for Justice, a live music event, kindly hosted by Orange Peel and generously co-sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Lexis Nexis and Macquarie.

Let me ask you, can you imagine living a life away from your home, in a situation where you had to leave your loved ones behind and seek asylum in Hong Kong?

Interpretation is essential because our service users are survivors of war, persecution, and torture that have found themselves in a country and culture foreign to them.

Last week, I accompanied my colleagues and several refugees to observe the Legislative Council’s (“LegCo”) Panel on Security meeting. The session was to discuss the Hong Kong Government’s comprehensive review of the strategy of handling non-refoulement claims, including the Unified Screening Mechanism (the government’s screening process for asylum claims, or the “USM”).

Refugees have recently made the headlines in Hong Kong’s local newspapers.

When people hear about the work of Justice Centre they always ask, "What can I do to help?". It’s a question that I asked myself. Consequently, last September marked a significant change for me; I took a sabbatical from a successful nine-year career in the financial sector to become Justice Centre’s Fundraising Manager.

If Chief Executive Leung’s recent remark that HKSAR could “quit” the Convention against Torture was meant as a joke, he isn’t getting many laughs. Least of all because his timing is off – just over a month ago the Committee against Torture (CAT) released its concluding observations from its fifth periodic review of the HKSAR territory.

On my first day at Justice Centre I remember I was asked what I thought about refugees. After a slight hesitation, I answered, “The media says some are bogus refugees who come to Hong Kong intentionally for economic benefits”. However, the more I researched refugee issues as part of my work at Justice Centre, the more I found out how biased the Hong Kong mainstream media can be in its coverage.

Last week was a pretty exciting week for our team, fresh from our first Human Rights Week 2015, which came to a close with the Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize 2015 Awards Ceremony and Charity Auction at the Fringe Club.

Only one week to go till the launch of Human Rights Week 2015! Are you as excited as we are?

The Justice Centre team is proud to bring to you Human Rights Week 2015 in the run up to International Human Rights Day (December 10)! Human Rights Week aims to provide a platform for the public to celebrate and learn about human rights through the arts, talks and activities for the whole family.

My grandfather was a refugee from Hungary who went on to live in Belgium and had refugee status for almost 30 years. He had survived terrible deprivations, amongst them several years in a Russian gulag (forced labour camp). The effects of his experiences on his personality left a profound impact on me: he never locked his house, should anyone need shelter. He invited every street vendor into his home, and said that when everything is taken away, only kindness and love is left to share with others.

This week, Justice Centre as well as other civil society members had the opportunity to address the Legislative Council Panel on Security (LegCo Panel) in advance of Hong Kong’s periodic review by the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva later this month.

This week, we interview David (name changed), a refugee from the Middle East who joyfully told us about winning the elections to be on the board of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) at his children’s school. Refugees are largely invisible in Hong Kong, and because of this, there are never enough stories about how refugees can and do positively contribute to their local communities. When we heard David’s story, we just knew we had to share it with you.

We are creatures of narratives. From our sophisticated moral code, to why you bought that iced skim milk latte this morning, our actions have reasons rooted in one story or another. Stories are simple things which help us understand the world, but they do demand one thing: for the audience to listen with an open heart, at least until the end of the tale. This is a story of hip hop and our journey of reflecting social injustices through the power of personal stories.

“Imagine a perfect day in a perfect job. You wake up, and everything is exactly how you would like it to be. You feel respected, you feel happy, you feel fulfilled. You get along great with your boss. What would decent work mean to you?” This is the question we have been asking domestic workers in the past couple of weeks in preparation for our upcoming report.

A study on the status of ethnic minorities, released this week, by Prof. Puja Kapai at The University of Hong Kong found that poverty rates amongst ethnic minority groups in Hong Kong are much higher than those of the ethnic Chinese population, and are getting worse.

For the last seven months, I have been helping Justice Centre as a volunteer to support Voices for Protection – an innovative advocacy and human rights training programme to provide refugees with the skills, tools, platform and opportunities to engage in advocacy and become their own change-makers in the community. Through the generous funding of HER Fund, we are pleased to announce a special intake of Voices for Protection adapted for women

This is my second week in my new role as Executive Director of Justice Centre, and indeed in Hong Kong, having left Europe in the thick of the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

When I told my friends I was volunteering at an NGO fighting for forced migrants’ rights this summer, the responses I was met with were often a mix of curiosity and scepticism. The knee-jerk reaction from every one of my friends was, “Are there really refugees in Hong Kong?”.

The “force” is an energy field which is created by, surrounds and penetrates all living things and binds them together (at least in the fictional universe of Star Wars). I have always believed I have that force in me. Okay, I’ll admit I am a geek. But isn’t the idea that your life can light up the life of another person epically poetic?

I remember hearing about Ai Wei Wei’s landscape of “Sunflower seeds” when it was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London in 2010, and wondering how such a simple concept – a tiny sunflower seed – could be the catalyst for a large scale installation that would be so powerful and influential. Londoners were captivated at the intricacy of the 100 million handcrafted porcelain “seeds”, weighing a total of over 150 tons and spread over 10cm deep at the gallery.

The word ‘law’ often connotes interns working late into the night, law students reading endless stacks of paperwork, and associates downing their third cup of coffee as they stare at the piles of briefs weighing down their desks. As a 15-year-old girl, it was hard to imagine that the legal aspects of my experience in the Young Advocates’ Programme with Justice Centre would be the parts that exhilarated me the most.

Last year, I wrote a blog saying that Hong Kong was “in denial” about human trafficking in its borders. This was in response to the government’s reaction to being ranked at Tier 2, once again, in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, in a press release where the administration asserted: “there is no sign or evidence showing that Hong Kong is becoming a source, a destination or a place of transit for human trafficking activities.”