The High Court has rejected challenges by an anonymised married Georgian couple to decisions refusing them refugee status and subsidiary protection in Ireland.
N.S. and T.S. challenged separate July 2023 decisions of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, which had accepted significant parts of their account, including threats and violence connected to their relationship, but concluded that they were not entitled to international protection.
Their families objected to the relationship partly because T.S.’s mother was N.S.’s godmother, a relationship treated within their Georgian Orthodox community as akin to a blood relationship. N.S. had also been promised in marriage to I.K., a police officer.
The Tribunal accepted that T.S. had been assaulted by I.K. and others, requiring hospital treatment, and that police stopped investigating after learning of I.K.’s involvement. It also accepted that N.S. faced a reasonable chance of assault by I.K. amounting to persecution.
However, the Tribunal found no Convention nexus between that risk and grounds such as religion or membership of a particular social group, concluding that I.K.’s hostility arose because he had wanted to marry N.S. It separately accepted that the risk from I.K. could amount to serious harm for subsidiary-protection purposes.
The central remaining issue was therefore whether effective State protection was available in Georgia. The Tribunal found that, despite the failure of particular police officers to pursue the assault complaint, Georgia had an effective police and judicial system and mechanisms including the Public Defender’s Office for dealing with police misconduct.
Mr Justice Bradley held that this assessment met the legal test. State protection need not be perfect; the question is whether reasonable and effective protective measures exist and are accessible.
The court also rejected a fair-procedures challenge concerning an alternative explanation for police looking for the couple in Borjomi.
Both judicial review applications were refused. The judge’s provisional view was that the State respondents should receive their costs, subject to further submissions.