www.jandoerfel.com

Year of call: 2000

PRACTICE AREAS:
Immigration (including business immigration),
Nationality, Asylum, Deportation, European law and human rights, Employment Law, civil law, personal injury.

EDUCATION/ EXPERIENCE:
Jan holds a Master's degree LLM in International Human Rights Law from Essex University (with Distinction).

From 2000 to 2002, he worked as research assistant to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, and undertook fact-finding missions to Brazil and Uzbekistan.

PRACTICE PROFILE:
Jan practices in immigration, asylum and human rights law. He furthermore has a particular interest in general discrimination cases and employment law. He also undertakes general civil and personal injury cases.

He appears on a regular basis before the First and Upper Tier Tribunal in asylum and immigration cases on behalf of clients from many different countries. His experience is wide ranging and includes substantive hearings, fast track hearings, deportation cases and bail hearings. In addition to asylum and human rights cases, he undertakes all types of entry clearance cases. Jan appears in the Administrative Court and the Court of Appeal in immigration, asylum and human rights cases including cases involving EC law.

He regularly advises on Judicial Review applications and applications to the Court of Appeal. He acts frequently in emergency applications before the High Court to stop removals, in unlawful removal cases and in cases involving medical issues, such as compliance with the British HIV Association Guidelines ("BHIVA Guidelines"). 

NOTABLE CASES:
SX (Albania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
[2008] All ER (D) 259 (Jun)

The Queen on the application of Armand Marcel Koimon v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] EWHC 2733 (Admin)

FURTHER PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION:
Jan is Director of the International Research Centre on Social Minorities which lobbies international organisations on human rights matters, including on discrimination against refugees and asylum seekers and persons discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

Jan regularly advises NGOs both in the UK and abroad on the effective use of UN mechanisms. He uses these mechanisms, in particular UN Special Rapporteurs, in his court work and regularly lobbies UN Committee in Geneva on a wide variety of human rights issues, including in relation to asylum and immigration policy and practice.

He was nominated and shortlisted for the Peter Duffy Award 2008 (awarded by JUSTICE, Liberty and the Law Society).

He is a member of the Executive Committee of Medical Justice which works to defend and promote the health rights, and associated legal rights, of immigration detainees in the UK and to end the medical abuse of detainees and the damaging effects of immigration detention on their health.

TRAINING
Jan is an experienced trainer in the fields of immigration law, international human rights and refugee law and the use of UN mechanisms. He has trained for the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, HJT and the British Council. He has lectured to and trained non-governmental organisations and lawyers in the UK, Syria, Russia and Ukraine (including border guards) on international human rights law, UN mechanisms and international refugee law.

MEMBERSHIP:
Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (ILPA)
Employment Law Bar Association (ELBA)
Employment Law Association (ELA)
Discrimination Law Association (DLA)

LANGUAGES:
Jan is a fluent German and French speaker.

PUBLICATIONS:
Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol.24, No.2 2005 The Convention against torture and the Protection of Refugees in Human Rights and Refugees (UNHCR, Oxford University Press)

International Research Centre For Social Minorities (July 2005) Sexual minorities in Uzbekistan

United Nations Fact-Sheet No.4 (June 2002) Combating Torture (United Nations, Geneva)

Co-author of Press for Change, Transsexual People in the Workplace - A Code of Practice (1999)

PRACTICE GROUP(S):
Immigration, Employment, Civil, Personal Injury