The High Court has refused a Georgian woman’s attempt to overturn a decision denying her international protection, finding that the protection officer had adequately considered the substance of her case.
MD, who arrived in Ireland on 5 September 2022, challenged a decision notified to her in June 2024. She argued that the decision-maker had failed to address an important part of her claim: that as an ethnic Georgian internally displaced from Abkhazia, she faced persecution there and could not reasonably relocate elsewhere in Georgia.
The judgment records that MD fled Abkhazia with her family during unrest in 1993 and spent most of her life in Tbilisi. She later alleged that associates of her deceased husband, who had converted to Islam and fought in Syria, harassed and assaulted her because she remained Christian and raised her daughter in that faith.
She said a group of men attacked her at her shop in August 2022 and threatened her and her daughter. She left Tbilisi days later and sought protection after arriving in Ireland.
Mr Justice Barr held on 24 November 2025 that the protection decision, read as a whole, had considered her displacement from Abkhazia as well as her account of threats in Tbilisi. The decision-maker had not accepted her claim that she faced a real risk from her late husband’s associates and had concluded that she could safely live in Tbilisi.
The court said there was no suggestion that she would be required to return to Abkhazia. Even on the legal approach advanced by MD, the finding that she could safely reside in Tbilisi would lead to the same result.
The court did extend the statutory deadline for bringing the judicial review proceedings, accepting that a short delay arose after her solicitor sent a pre-litigation letter seeking withdrawal of the decision.
However, the substantive challenge failed. Final orders and costs were left for later determination.