Equal Rights Beyond Borders is a charitable organization, founded in 2016, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and Athens, Greece, with additional offices on the Greek islands Chios and Kos.
[1][2] It offers free legal support to people on the move and asylum seekers, particularly towards the reunion of families and helping with visa procedures.
[3][4] With these aims it both represents specific clients and also takes on certain strategic cases where litigation may help draw attention to more general issues.
In 2023 it started a project supporting survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), in the asylum procedure, in criminal proceedings and matters of family law.
Against this backdrop, some young lawyers trained in Germany traveled to the Greek island of Chios in a spontaneous show of solidarity to provide legal support to asylum seekers arriving there by boat.
In 2016, the non-profit, registered association Equal Rights Beyond Borders was founded [18] co-founded by Clara Bünger, now a member of the German Bundestag, who helped open and set up the organization's first office on Chios in 2017.
[22][23][24] In addition to the living conditions, which are generally described as inhumane, the detention of families, children and vulnerable people, such as pregnant women or victims of sexualized violence, was particularly criticized.
Since its foundation, the organization has also been trying to enforce the human rights of asylum seekers at Europe's external borders with the help of strategic litigation in order to draw attention to their situation and improve it.
Since its foundation, the organization has published a large number of expert reports on the human rights situation of people on the move in Greece.