ASYLEX – Rights in Exile Platform

Building a Global Legal Lifeline: How Pro Bono Lawyers Are Strengthening the Rights in Exile Platform

For millions of asylum seekers and refugees around the world, access to legal information and representation can make a real difference to reaching safety and protection. Laws vary by country, and the local organisations equipped to help are often invisible to the people who need them most. The Rights in Exile (RiE) platform is working towards filling this informational gap, and for the past year, a growing network of pro bono lawyers – matched through Pro Publico – has been helping it do exactly that.


A platform built on ten years of trust

Originally developed by AMERA International, the Rights in Exile platform has spent over a decade as a global resource hub for refugee legal protection, reaching up to 10,000 users a month. It has now been relaunched by AsyLex, the online legal advisory service for asylum seekers, with an ambitious next chapter: scaling the platform through a collaborative management model that brings together legal professionals, academic institutions and refugee law organisations worldwide.
The platform serves two audiences at once. For refugees and asylum seekers, it is a way to find accurate, country-specific legal information and connect with local legal representation. For the legal professionals working in this field, it is a shared knowledge base – a way to find relevant contacts where they are needed, and avoid duplicating work on the same complex, fast-moving legal questions.
To keep that resource accurate and useful, it needs constant upkeep. Refugee law does not stand still: legal frameworks shift, protection pathways open and close, and the situation facing LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in a given country can change within a single legislative cycle. That ongoing research need is where pro bono legal support has become essential.


What the collaboration covers

Since 2025, AsyLex has been working closely with a number of law firms, matched through Pro Publico, whose lawyers research and draft legal memos across multiple jurisdictions to support three areas of the platform:
The Global Database of Legal Assistance Organisations, mapping country-specific refugee legal frameworks and the local organisations that provide help on the ground.
The Global Database on LGBTQI+ Country Situations, tracking country-specific legal and social conditions for LGBTQI+ refugees and the organisations that support them.
The Safe Pathways Database, currently in development, mapping country-specific access to humanitarian, non-humanitarian, mixed and complementary pathways to protection.
These are not one-off research favours. The memos are continuously updated, reflecting the reality that legal protection for refugees is a moving target that demands sustained attention rather than a single snapshot.


An impact measured in reach – and in rigour

According to AsyLex, the numbers behind the collaboration in 2025 alone are substantial: 30 Legal Assistance Reports completed, 29 of them already published on the platform, with a further 114 currently in progress. Altogether, the pro bono teams have contributed close to 1,000 hours of legal work.
But for Vittoria Catalfamo, Head of Partnership Management, Outreach and Communications at Rights in Exile, the value goes beyond the hours logged. “The collaboration exceeded expectations,” she explains. The lawyers involved engaged with the same rigour and professionalism AsyLex expects from any client relationship – and went further, investing time in understanding international human rights law deeply enough to strengthen the platform’s substance, not just add to its volume. Coordination on the firms’ side, she notes, was a key reason the work ran smoothly and stayed on schedule.
The result is a platform that is measurably stronger: more comprehensive, more current, and better equipped to help asylum seekers find not just information, but a real route to local legal representation.


Matchmaking that gets out of the way

Sustaining a collaboration like this – spanning multiple firms, multiple jurisdictions and a continuously evolving research need – depends on matchmaking that can move quickly and match precisely. That is where Pro Publico’s role comes in: connecting AsyLex’s specific, evolving research needs with law firms that have the right expertise and appetite for sustained pro bono engagement, and keeping the collaboration coordinated once it is underway.
As Vittoria puts it: “Access to justice isn’t built in silos, it’s built through collaboration. Pro Publico has a real gift for matching us with the right partners, and thanks to them, we’ve been able to expand and strengthen our network of collaborators, who support us brilliantly in bringing meaningful access to justice a little closer for asylum seekers and refugees everywhere.”


Why it matters

Access to justice is enshrined in UN Sustainable Development Goal 16, but for displaced people, that principle only becomes real when legal information and legal representation are actually accessible. The Rights in Exile platform exists to close that distance – and the sustained, substantive work of pro bono lawyers, matched through Pro Publico, is helping it do so at a scale that keeps growing and a global network of legal professionals still expanding.
This collaboration is ongoing. As new legal memos are published and the Safe Pathways Database takes shape, the Rights in Exile platform will continue to grow as a resource for asylum seekers and the legal professionals who support them – one jurisdiction, one memo, one partnership at a time.

 

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