Human rights defenders' story: Meriem El May and Sofia Vegas from Switzerland
All human beings have the right to live with dignity, no matter whether they are documented or not. Meriem El May and Sofia Vegas both work for Permanence MNA/RMNA, a Geneva-based legal centre that protects young unaccompanied migrants.
In this video, El May and Vegas speak about their work at the Permanence and encourage the Geneva authorities to improve protections for unaccompanied minors. Currently, many minors lack essential goods and medical care and face precarious housing conditions. The legal centre encourages the Geneva authorities to establish measures that would prevent the expulsion of unaccompanied minors from their homes – at least during the pandemic -. and to issue cantonal identity cards for unaccompanied minors that display their ‘unaccompanied minor’ status, so that they are better protected against abusive police controls. In times of crisis such as the current pandemic, human rights defenders are truly essential workers!