Support for Migrants and Refugees Survivors of Gender-Based Violence and Other Forms of Violence in Palermo Through Legal Assistance and Training for Frontline Workers

December 23, 2025

The project was developed through a collaboration between UNICEF, CLEDU, and the Department of Law of the University of Palermo.
Duration: 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2021
The aim was to strengthen the local protection system for migrants and refugees who survived gender-based violence or other forms of violence.
The project included the following activities:

Front-office legal services: CLEDU provided legal assistance to migrants and refugees who survived gender-based violence, as well as to individuals at risk, through a multidisciplinary team of lawyers, students, volunteers, and cultural-linguistic mediators, all trained specifically on gender-based violence.
Capacity building and learning support through:
- Workshops and seminars on preventing and responding to gender-based violence and on children’s rights, within the university course “Migration, Rights and Integration” during the 2020/2021 academic year. In 2021/2022, these workshops were officially incorporated into the curriculum. UNICEF, with CLEDU’s support, continued to train teaching staff to enable them to deliver the sessions autonomously from 2022/2023 onwards.
- Training programme: “Supporting Survivors of Violence: The Role of Linguistic and Cultural Mediators.” Trained mediators were included in a local registry of professionals supporting migrants and refugees who survived gender-based violence.
- Publication of a training curriculum on gender-based violence for university students in the field of migration studies, with a focus on child protection. Three legal opinions were also produced during the year to support research activities.

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