History
In 2000, the Refugee Legal Aid Project, now AMERA, began at the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Programme (FMRS) of the American University in Cairo under the direction of Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond.
In August 2001, legal aid for refugees received funding from the Danish Embassy and the Amberstone Trust in the UK. It then moved under the umbrella of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, where it stayed for more than two years. In 2000, there were no lawyers in Egypt trained in providing legal aid for refugees. This led Legal Aid to rely on volunteer foreign lawyers and paralegals. However, in 2002, Legal Aid began employing Egyptian lawyers, the very first of whom were Ashraf Milad, Sanaa El Hakim and Tarek Mahrous. AMERA continues to receive volunteer foreign and Egyptian paralegals and lawyers but each team is now headed by an Egyptian staff member.
In 2004, AMERA moved to its new location in Garden City, Cairo and is now an independent NGO working under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. AMERA-Egypt is an overseas office of AMERA-UK, a charity registered under the Charity Commission.
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