Eversheds Sutherland is proud to announce the launch of a new corporate responsibility initiative from its team in the Middle East

Providing opportunity and support to our most vulnerable communities

Focused solely on refugee law students in the region, and working in close partnership with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and UNRWA, this initiative targets students with refugee status who are based in Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. The firm is currently financially sponsoring two law students for their four-year university studies, with a commitment to sponsor two additional students during the next academic year.

In addition to financial sponsorship, the firm’s lawyers will provide mentoring, internship opportunities and training to refugee students studying law on their path to qualification. Eversheds Sutherland’s aim is to build a close relationship with each student to help them secure roles as qualified lawyers, either at the firm or through our network. In collaboration with the firm’s Service Excellence team, we are in the process of developing an online platform, a one-stop shop to facilitate the educational and formative aspects of the program and open communication channel between the firm’s lawyers and the refugee students.

Tawfiq Tabbaa, Managing Partner, Eversheds Sutherland Middle East comments:

“This commitment is our largest corporate responsibility initiative in the region and I am delighted to provide support from the firm with a combination of funding and skills training. A team of colleagues from all of our Middle East offices will also be providing further support to this initiative. The program is just getting started but has great potential to continue in future years and our hope is that these students will be able to qualify into careers as lawyers and achieve greater independence and control of their lives.”

Lana Habash, Partner, Eversheds Sutherland and founder of the Middle East Law Scholarship for Refugees, comments:

“This is a deeply personal initiative for me. Like many Palestinians, my family were displaced from Palestine in 1967 and have never been able to return. Many Palestinians were made twice refugees having also been displaced in 1948. With the more recent events, the refugee population in the Middle East and North Africa has reached a staggering number of almost sixteen million people, mostly living in refugee camps with meagre means, barely sufficient to survive, let alone pursue higher education. We are confident that, through the power of education, we can support our most vulnerable communities and help these young law students achieve their goals and ambitions in the face of considerable obstacles.”

The team at Eversheds Sutherland will work with students who qualify for some level of support, to benefit from the non-financial aspects of the program. A selection of these students will also be given an opportunity to take an internship with the firm, and will benefit from mentoring and skills training through the dedicated online platform.

For refugees who are not based in a jurisdiction where Eversheds Sutherland has an office, it intends to bring in other partner firms in the region to support with internship programs so the refugee students can effectively prepare for post-graduation and benefit from having a first-hand experience at the practise of law.