Anafee Fränznick is a graduate lawyer working on asylum and migration law, with a particular interest in human rights, strategic litigation and legal research. She currently works on asylum cases before German administrative courts. Before moving into legal practice, she worked as a psychosocial counsellor supporting people on the move belonging to particularly vulnerable groups. She has also been involved in a documentary research project in Tunisia focusing on the experiences of people on the move from sub-Saharan Africa, which premiered as an art exhibition at the 76th Locarno Film Festival. As legal counsel for No Name Kitchen (NNK), she contributed to submissions to the UN Human Rights Committee and the European Parliament concerning unlawful pushbacks at the EU’s borders. During her legal traineeship, she worked with the Border Justice Team at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and at the European Court of Human Rights. She holds an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, focusing on international criminal law, international humanitarian law and human rights. Her work explores how law, research and other forms of knowledge production can be combined to make human rights violations visible and challenge dominant narratives.
Bridging the Evidence Gap: Strengthening Proof in Asylum Procedings
Asylum decision-making often depends on country-of-origin information to assess whether individuals face persecution or serious harm upon return. Yet in many contexts, political repression, insecurity and restricted access make it increasingly difficult to independently verify developments on the ground. This creates a growing gap between the evidentiary standards of asylum law and the availability of reliable information. This project investigates how legally admissible and methodologically robust evidence can be generated where direct access to countries of origin is obstructed. It combines interviews with recent arrivals and people remaining in countries of origin, open-source intelligence methods to document human rights violations and doctrinal analysis of evidentiary standards in asylum law, particularly the burden of proof and the “real risk” threshold.
The project will develop a structured evidentiary archive and a litigation-oriented toolkit to support risk assessment in asylum proceedings. By providing new and verifiable forms of evidence, it aims to strengthen evidentiary integrity, improve judicial risk assessments and safeguard the principle of non-refoulement.
