By Emily Lever
Clifford Chance LLP has promised to give US$1 million over the next year to humanitarian relief for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, the firm told Law360 Pulse Thursday.
The firm launched a donation matching programme to benefit the UN Refugee Agency and organizations on the ground in Eastern European countries neighboring Ukraine, such as Homo Faber, an organization in Lublin, Poland, that provides food and housing to refugees, the Romanian branch of Save the Children, and the Czech organization People in Need. The firm is also putting together a task force to strategize monetary, pro bono and other support for Ukrainian refugees in the longer term, a firm spokesperson told Law360 Pulse.
“We continue to watch with enormous sadness the devastating impacts of war and the accelerating humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and its neighboring countries,” the firm said in a statement. “We have acted quickly to grant funds to trusted international NGOs whom we have worked with previously in response to the refugee and combat-related crises, as well as to local NGOs recommended by our offices nearest to the conflict.”
Over 5 million people have fled from Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. There are also 7 million internally displaced people within the country, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Clifford Chance has said its offices across continental Europe are collaborating in different ways with refugee aid. In Poland, attorneys from the firm have co-organized or attended trainings from the national bar association to provide immigration legal services to refugees. They are also helping staff a legal hotline created by the Warsaw bar, according to an attorney in that office.
Non-Ukrainians living in the country and displaced by the conflict have often been overlooked, particularly non-European people, the attorney note said.
“We are also responding to the racism which unfortunately appeared on the Ukrainian border,” the attorney said in a statement shared by the firm from which their name was redacted. “So far, we have helped a group of 17 Liberians who were not served by the Ukrainian Border Guard for over 50 hours. We intervened in their case with UNHCR, and I’m glad to say that the group is now safe in Poland.”
“We are the first helping hand for Ukrainians,” the attorney added. “That is why we do everything to make refugees feel safe in Poland.”
In addition to Homo Faber, recipients of grants from Clifford Chance in Poland are Ukrainian House, a Ukrainian-run program that provides material and legal support; the Polish Migration Forum, which provides psychological counseling and job placement and helps integrate Ukrainian children into Polish schools; and the Association for Legal Intervention, which is helping Ukrainians obtain legal residency in Poland and connect to medical, social and housing services.
In Romania, which shares a 380-mile border with Ukraine, inhabitants are interacting directly with refugees arriving from Ukraine. Employees in Clifford Chance’s office in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, are fundraising, providing pro bono legal services and doing general volunteering with Save the Children Romania and the Red Cross, according to a senior associate in the office.
“Romania, as other conflict neighboring countries, opened its doors to the many Ukrainian citizens trying to escape their war-torn country. They need shelter, food, any local support possible, and it is being offered by the Romanian state, many NGOs and generous individuals,” the senior associate said in a statement shared by a firm spokesperson. “The war in Ukraine shapes the future these days. Moments like these impose actions. We are all counted on to do something.”
* Chance was among a host of firms that shuttered offices in Russia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
–Editing by Gemma Horowitz.
