Hotline fundraising campaign: A life hangs in the Balance

The Hotline has undertaken our largest-ever fundraising campaign for the activities of the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. Until this Monday, every donation up to 500,000 NIS ($150,000) will be doubled by a generous anonymous donor. This is a rare opportunity for a significant leap forward in our fight for the rights of asylum seekers, migrants, and victims of human trafficking here in Israel.

The money we we’ll raise would allow us to do the long and tedious work behind every flagship case that receives media attention, and the harsh daily reality of Israel’s asylum seekers, particularly those held in detention. This campaign will give us the freedom to continue taking on cases of clients who truly have nowhere else to turn.

This year we are forced to focus on a fight that too many people mistakenly think we have already won: the struggle against human trafficking. Since the beginning of 2021, nearly once every two weeks, a woman victim of human trafficking has shown up at our door. Over the course of 2020 we waged a strategic battle aimed at improving the Israeli police’s treatment of human trafficking survivors. Today, we’re seeing the fruits of our labor: the police are formulating a new procedure designed to clearly define the evidentiary threshold required to recognize an individual as a trafficking survivor, a status which grants them access to rehabilitative resources, and this new procedure will include an appeals mechanism for cases in which we disagree with the police’s initial decision!

This change will allow us to achieve justice for survivors who have been waiting too long for the recognition and rights they deserve. We’ve made the major systemic change, and we need to put policy into practice for the individuals who need rehabilitative resources now. For this next step, we need your help. During the campaign, every donation up to 500,000 NIS ($150,000) will be doubled. Your donation will go twice as far towards helping those who need it most. Together we can meet our commitment not to leave anyone behind.