(December 15, 2017) Reed Smith LLP is pleased to announce that pro bono counsel, Jayne E. Fleming has been honored by City & State as a 2017 CSR Responsible 100 Honoree in recognition of her tireless commitment to representing asylum-seekers, refugees, and victims of torture over the past two decades. Fleming leads Reed Smith’s Refugee Protection team, and she is the founder of the Patricia Fleming Foundation, a nonprofit that supports refugees and internally displaced persons in the Middle East, Greece, and Haiti.
Fleming has handled dozens of asylum cases, many of which have helped move the law forward in the area of gender-based violence. She has led several missions to identify the root causes of violence against women and children in Central America. Over the past decade, Fleming has developed human rights projects in two of the most challenging regions in the world: Haiti and the Middle East. She is leading a refugee protection project in Jordan in partnership with Center for Victims of Torture and a torture victim rehabilitation project in Greece in partnership with Doctors without Borders.
In 2015, Fleming and her Middle East teams built a holistic program to support Syrian, Iraqi, and Sudanese women refugees fleeing violence and torture. Jayne runs this project with support from lawyers, medical experts, psychologists, nongovernmental organizations, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Reed Smith has partnered with UNHCR on legal cases in Haiti, Jordan, Iraq, Trinidad, Honduras, and the United States; and Fleming and her teams are assisting more than 40 women refugees in the Middle East in cases involving kidnapping, sexual torture, rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, and labor exploitation.