Legal aid to long-staying children

NOAS offers legal aid in asylum cases. If you seek legal aid for a family reunification case, an expulsion case, visa or citizenship, please contact Juss-Buss.

We go through all asylum cases that are sent to us to consider whether we can offer help. If you have an asylum case that does not involve long-staying children, you can find more information about how to proceed to send this case to NOAS here.

Legal aid to long-staying children
NOAS has lauched a call offering free legal aid to all families with long-staying children. We prioritize two categories of cases; 1) the cases of children who have lived in Norway for at least four years and where the children have gone to school for at least one year, 2) the cases of children where the ‘one-time-solution’ may be applied. Read more about this solution here (in Norwegian)

NOAS will first treat the cases of the children who have stayed in Norway the longest. Children who are under school age or who have less than four years’ stay have no grounds for leave to remain in Norway with today’s practice, and these cases will not be prioritized. Our possibility to help in the cases of long-staying children will also generally depend upon how much money we can fundraise for our call. All families who register their cases with us will get individual feedback.

In the cases of long-staying children we need a different set of documents than in cases concerning protection. In the cases of long-staying children, we need the following documents:

• Power of attorney. The power of attorney must be printed, filled out and returned to us.
• The decisions of the Immigration Appeals Board (UNE). The last decision is the most important one.
• Former appeals (omgjøringsbegjæring) and documents that have been sent to UNE.

We also need you to answer the following questions:

• Has information been sent to UNE, but not been considered yet? (Is there an appeal (omgjøringsbegjæring) under review?)
• Is a lawyer currently working with the case?
• What id-documents have been delivered to UNE? Is there a possibility to get more id-documents, for example a passport? If the applicant has applied for a passport, we need a receipt for that.

We would also like information about the following:

• The child’s attachment to Norway. Statements from for example schools and spare-time activities may be of importance.
• What languages do the children speak? (Norwegian + parent’s first language)
• The children’s + the parents’ physical and psychological health condition. If there are any grave health problems, we would like this to be documented.
• Has the family ever been in contact with the Child Protective Services (Barnevernet)? In such cases, we would like documents from them.
• Are there other concerns that influence the parent’s care ability? Problems with substance abuse is for example very relevant information.
• Information about the situation upon return will also be useful. We do not need general country information, but information about whether the family will return to the home town or to another part of the country is relevant, so too is information about family/network at the place of return, whether the family belongs to an exposed group or any matters that make the family vulnerable upon return. For information about these matters, NOAS may be interested in seeing the documents in the family’s asylum case, particularly the asylum interview.

If the case is considered for the one-time-solution (Read more about this solution here (in Norwegian)), we do not need information about these latter points. In these cases a broader evaluation of the children’s attachment, care situation, return situation etc. will be made.

If you want NOAS to review your case, you have to send us a copy of the documents in your asylum case. If it is not possible for you to get hold of the documents yourself, you may contact us to help you gather them.

You can send all your documents to us via post or fax:
Postal address: NOAS, Torggata 22, 0183 Oslo
Fax: +47 22 36 56 61

We will review your case as soon as we can. NOAS currently receives a large number of cases from long-staying children, and it may take some time for us to review all the cases. We will prioritize the cases of the children who have stayed in Norway the longest, and the cases of those who come from countries with a greater risk of forced return. All registered cases will get individual feedback.