The core of the project is the social supervision over the use of alternatives to detention of foreigners as preventive measures that are completely new institution in Polish legal system.  The project’s objective is to examine how the provisions, which introduced the possibility of the use of alternatives, are applied in practice and whether their introduction has had a real impact on strengthening the protection of fundamental rights of irregular migrants and foreigners in procedure of granting refugee status, with a special focus on families with children. In the years 2012 and 2013 the Rule of Law Institute conducted the monitoring of judicial decisions, based on which foreigners were placed in detention centers. We believe that, also thanks to our report, in 2013 the Polish Parliament adopted a new Act on Foreigners and decided to introduce many alternatives to detention that were proposed in our report. Therefore, one year after the entry into force of the Act it is worth examining, how this new legal institutions are effective.

The project will be concentrated mainly on conducting the monitoring that will involve the analysis of cases, in which decisions on the use of alternatives to detention or detention were taken.  The team of the project will also conduct a structured interview among non-governmental organisations’ employees, judges and the Border Guard’s officers. Moreover, the use of alternatives will be strengthen throughout ongoing interventions in cases submitted  by foreigner to the Rule of Law Institute.  The outcomes of  the project will be ejective monitoring and publication of the report on the use of alternatives to detention of foreigners.

The project is financed under Citizens for Democracy Programme financed by European Economic Area Grants