The Bigger Picture

1 November 2023

My story as an advocate begins in a café in Damascus in 2010, one year before the war in Syria began and authoritarian regimes across the region fell like dominos.

I was 21 years old and a recent university graduate, with only some vague idea that I liked to write and tell stories about human struggles. I decided to apply for law school and drafted my application from that small café. I had no idea then how much would soon change or that my path to becoming a refugee lawyer would unfold alongside the largest migrant crisis in modern history.

As of the date of this post, I have acted as legal counsel for refugees and migrants in Canada for over eight years. Those who I have had the privilege of representing include unaccompanied minors from Somalia, journalists from Iraq and Eritrea, activists and human right defenders from Syria, Sudan, and Turkey, women civil society leaders from Afghanistan, and survivors of torture from repressive regimes globally.

My path to becoming a lawyer is rooted in my love for telling stories in a form and space that has the potential to alter the course of a person’s life for the better. As lawyers, we relay narratives in courtrooms and before tribunals every day, though often in silos and away from society at large.

In The Bigger Picture, I will share snippets of stories I have come across in my work as a migrant rights advocate — of mothers and grandparents, farmers and construction workers, activists and ordinary people who left their homeland and crossed borders to find themselves here. The names will be changed and only those who wish to tell their stories, and are safe to do so, will be shared here.

My hope is that, through these posts, we learn —about each other, the resilience of migrants and refugees, and the brutality of borders and anti-immigration policies.

- Sofia