Between November 18^th and 21^st, Detention Visitors from 8 country offices met in Malta for the 18^th Detention Visitor Support Group (DVSG) training. This annual meeting gathers JRS workers visiting people in Detention Centres across Europe to discuss the latest developments and challenges they are facing as well as participate in training sessions led by experts to better support detained migrants.

This year the meeting focused on vulnerability within the context of detention and how to best accompany those most vulnerable. To explore this theme, discussions and trainings centred around vulnerability criteria, which vary across countries, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support practices that can be applied in the visits as well as ways for the visitors to take care of themselves in harsh and emotionally charged contexts.

Mariza Koronioti, JRS Europe Programme Officer in charge of the Detention Under the Spotlight project and lead organizer of the event, expressed: “This meeting comes at a crucial time. It is the first DVSG since the approval of European Migration and Asylum Pact. This package of policies will be hugely impactful for Detention Visitors since it will drastically increase the number of people in detention, specially at the borders of the EU”.

“We are happy to see continued commitment and enthusiasm from country offices to participate in this training and we are glad to continue co-creating this space that fosters an environment for detention visitors to support and accompany each other”, she added.

In addition, the local office in Malta offered a closer look at the Maltese context, especially looking into the deterioration of access to detention centres and increasing limitations to the services they can provide. In addition, the Aditus Foundation, a JRS Malta partner, presented their experience using strategic litigation, including before the European Court of Human Rights, the improvements they achieved through it and the challenges they have faced.

Finally, JRS Europe held the last sessions looking forward at the next steps in joint projects discussing how to best work together through legal, advocacy and communications joint activities that might maximize the impact of our work. This is crucially vital in a context where immigration detention is destined to drastically increase as a consequence of the policies of the European Migration and Asylum Pact.

The Detention Visitor Support Group was created in 2007 with the aim of offering training and support to staff and volunteers visiting detention centres across Europe. Since then, it has had annual meetings in which everyone gathers to share experiences and best practices in the hope of improving the services provided to people currently in Detention Centres.

Moreover, the experiences and observations of the detention visitors meeting at the DVSG lay the basis of JRS advocacy and communications work in the Detention Under the Spotlight project.

While having as ultimate goal the elimination of immigration detention, we will keep providing support to detained migrants across Europe and fighting for the respect of their human rights, especially within this extremely harmful context.