Co-hosted with Garden Court Chambers
During 2013 – 2014, the RLI is hosting special practice-based evening workshops on contemporary challenges in refugee protection. These two-hour workshops are designed to update practitioners and academics through stimulating discussion on new research and legal and policy developments.
This joint workshop engages with recent and proposed forthcoming developments in accelerated and third-country procedures under United Kingdom asylum law. Specific themes canvassed during the workshop include returns under the Dublin II Regulation, designation of Safe Countries of Origin, and procedural fairness in the detained fast-track process.
Chair: Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, Queen Mary University of London
Speakers:
- Stephen Knafler, QC Garden Court Chambers
- Mark Symes, Garden Court Chambers
Speakers Abstract:
Stephen Knafler QC has appeared as an advocate at all levels of the judicial system, including the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. He has appeared in over 200 reported cases. Many of these are landmark decisions relevant to community care, immigration, detention, discrimination, health and mental health, asylum support, social security, prisons, education, public authority negligence, human rights, civil liberties and housing. Stephen has also represented a number of clients in high value and/or sensitive mediations in immigration, health, local authority and community care cases. He has also advised and represented in many cases involving the immigration detention of adults and minors (including successful representation in a test case on exemplary damages), deportation, fast track, language analysis, family life cases, Dublin II cases (now pending in the CJEU) and asylum.
Mark Symes (who is registered with the Bar Council for public access work) provides advice and representation in all areas of immigration, asylum, and human rights law, including European Community free movement law. Rated as a "young and clever" rising star by the Legal 500, he undertakes advocacy from the First Tier Tribunal to the Court of Appeal, and deals with work ranging from business immigration and entry clearance representations and appeals, to refugee and criminal deportation cases. He sits as a Judge of the First Tier Tribunal and is a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, - University of London. He has particular expertise in appeals beyond first instance level having spent eight years specialising in higher advocacy at the Refugee Legal Centre and is very well known to the Senior Immigration Judiciary at Field House (in June 2011 he was invited to address the judiciary on behalf of Claimant lawyers in an expert seminar on Country Guidance). He has a flourishing judicial review practice, specialising in refugee, subsidiary protection and human rights issues, though frequently extending to all kinds of public law challenges to the Home Office decision making, including the withdrawal and suspension of licences for educational establishments. He is particularly interested in the European dimension of international protection, and arguments based on the Qualification, Procedures and Reception Directives, and on the Charter of Fundamental Rights; and in exclusion from refugee status and subsidiary protection. He is a member of UNHCR’s pro bono panel of advocates.