With the help of Rights Georgia, two Syrian citizens were granted international protection in Georgia

8 May, 2023

With the help of the Rights Georgia, two Syrian citizens, a young man and a student girl, received international protection in Georgia.

The Syrian citizens had to leave their homeland due to the civil war that has been raging in the country since 2011, killing more than 300 thousand civilians, internally displacing up to 7 million people, and forcing more than 6 million Syrians to seek refuge in various countries around the world.

Both Syrians applied for asylum to the Migration Department of the Georgian Ministry of Interior, but the Migration Department denied them international protection based on the State Security Service's negative conclusion.

The asylum-seeking Syrians appealed the decision of the Migration Department to the Tbilisi City Court and won the case. The court found that the Migration Department had not adequately assessed the risks of loss of life and gross violations of fundamental rights that Syrian citizens would face if they returned to their country of origin, and granted their claims. However, the Migration Department appealed the decisions in both cases to the Tbilisi Court of Appeal.

The Tbilisi Court of Appeal, by its decision of May 3, 2023, upheld the decisions of the first instance court in both cases and finally ordered the Migration Department of the Ministry of Interior to grant refugee status to the young man and humanitarian status to the student girl.

The interests of the Syrian citizens were represented in the courts of both instances by the lawyer of Rights Georgia, Rusudan Mchedlishvili.

Rights Georgia provided free legal assistance to Syrian citizens under the UNHCR-funded project "Protecting and Empowering Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Humanitarian Status Holders, and Stateless Persons in Georgia".