Protecting and Empowering Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Humanitarian Status Holders, and Stateless Persons in Georgia
1 January, 2019
Project title: Protecting and Empowering Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Humanitarian Status Holders, and Stateless Persons in Georgia
Project Implementation Period: 1 January, 2019 – 31 December, 2022
Funding: 424 930,10 GEL
Donor: Project is financially supported by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Project Goal: Legal Protection of Refugees, Humanitarian Status Holders, Asylum Seekers, and Stateless Persons
I Objective: Access to and quality of status determination procedures improved
Following activities will be implemented in order to achieve the abovementioned project objective:
− Provide legal information and counselling to newly arrived asylum seekers on the asylum procedure, including rights and obligations during the entire stage of asylum procedure in Georgia, including in Martkopi reception centre;
− Monitor the needs for information of asylum-seekers and respond to these needs in a pro-active manner;
− Develop protection information materials based on needs identified in practice and, once cleared with UNHCR, ensure translation in relevant languages, printing and dissemination;
− Collect all the protection information materials developed and to ensure they are available on-line;
− Provide information about the relevant institutions and agencies that would provide social and other assistance to asylum seekers (where to go for help) as well as to the relevant institutions about the rights and entitlements of refugees, humanitarian status holders, asylum seekers, and stateless persons in Georgia as per the national, regional and international legislation;
− Contribute to monitoring of the legislative modifications and to be actively involved in providing legislative comments in areas directly affecting the project beneficiaries.
II Objective: Access to legal assistance and legal remedies improved
Following activities will be implemented in order to achieve second project objective:
− provide legal counselling and legal assistance to asylum-seekers during the entire stage of asylum procedures and to legally represent in courts, including at the Constitutional Court of Georgia and European Court of Human Rights, cases of strategic importance;
− provide legal counselling and assistance in other types of cases, e.g. naturalisation, access to rights and services by asylum-seekers and detention, with the aim to create positive jurisprudence and precedent setting judgments with legal representation to a limited number of cases that will be chosen based on agreed criteria;
− Monitor the profiling and in-depth interviews in selected number of cases;
− Support all asylum-seekers approaching their office in preparing their asylum applications as required by the national legislation;
− Persons with specific needs will be timely identified and will be treated with priority in provision of specialised legal services;
− Active coordination with Legal Aid Service of Georgia;
− Monitor access to justice in regard to administrative, civil and criminal cases involving refugees and asylum-seekers, and, where necessary, provide legal support to identified cases.
