CBJ - October 2011 #04. Helping refugees, worldwide, is a young lawyer's calling.

AuthorBy Diane Curtis Staff Writer

California Bar Journal

2011.

CBJ - October 2011 #04.

Helping refugees, worldwide, is a young lawyer's calling

The California LawyerOctober 2011Helping refugees, worldwide, is a young lawyer's callingBy Diane CurtisStaff WriterThese statistics are front and center on the Asylum Access website:

The average time spent in a refugee camp is 17 years. Most refugees are denied the right to work and provide for their families. Half of all refugees are children. 126 countries have signed the Refugee Convention but refuse to honor it. Developing countries are host to four-fifths of the world's refugees.

Emily Arnold-Fernandez once assumed that some organization or agency was watching over the world's refugees to make sure they were getting the rights to which they are entitled under international law. But an experience working on refugee rights in Egypt after her first year of law school demonstrated otherwise. Many deserving refugees were not even getting refugee status. Even those with refugee status were getting little beyond emergency food and shelter in camps. When the urgency of a refugee movement dissipated and the TV cameras went home, refugees were left to languish in tent camps. The prospect of getting a job, sending children to school, opening a bank account * rights written into international law and enjoyed by the rest of society * typically amounted to a pipe dream.

Rather than just lament the problem, Arnold-Fernandez decided to do something. After law school and some years working in civil rights law and for a nonprofit organization, she founded Asylum Access, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that has enlisted volunteer lawyers and helped more than 7,000 refugees in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the five years of its existence.

For her work, Arnold-Fernandez, 34, is the recipient of the 2011 Jack Berman Award of Achievement for Distinguished Service to the Profession and the Public presented by the California Young Lawyers Association. Named after a young lawyer killed in a shooting spree at a San Francisco law office in 1993, the award honors a lawyer who is in the first five years of active State Bar membership or under age 36 who has provided outstanding service to the legal profession and public and demonstrated dedication to issues of concern to new and young lawyers.

"I'm very, very honored,"...

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