Asylum Access Ecuador (AAE)
Asylum Access Ecuador (AAE) is an NGO that belongs to the global network Asylum Access. This initiative was founded in 2007 in response to shortcomings in refugee assistance policies. The AAE provides legal services and representation to refugees, advises them on the process of determining refugee status as well as the actions necessary to ensure the protection of their rights. This is done through two large groups of volunteers. The first one provides personalized assistance and representation for each refugee, and beyond the determination of refugee status, also defends refugees facing all types of human rights violations, such as access to work, education and other social services. The other group of volunteers carry out actions exclusively, through political advocacy and strategic litigation with the aim of improving the process of determining refugee status and more generally, their access to rights. AAE has offices in Esmeraldas, Lago Agrio, Ibarra, Tulcán, Guayaquil and Santo Domingo, and its work is shown to be of paramount importance, since Ecuador has approximately 250,000 refugees (mostly originating from Colombia), but only approximately 60,000 of these are actually recognized as refugees, illustrating that most of the country's refugees do not have a protected legal status.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- regular
- Mode of selection of participants
- restricted
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
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Ends
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