A new commentary by Asylos, in partnership with Rainbow Migration, has considered the Home Office’s country policy and information note on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in Georgia and identified various assertions on risk that are inconsistent with or unsupported by the country evidence elsewhere in the note. The commentary is accompanied by an up to date report on the situation for LGBTQI+ Georgians.

The approach by the Home Office to country policy information is of much wider significance, particularly in the context of recent troubling changes made to the country notes on Albania, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Background

In 2023 there were 14 asylum claims based on sexual orientation made by Georgian nationals, in 2022 there were 24 claims and 12 claims in 2021. The stakes are high for all of these people, regardless of the relatively low numbers of those seeking protection here, as the country’s parliament only yesterday voted through at third reading new anti-LGBT rights legislation that is hugely restrictive and regressive.

The Home Office was aware that there are significant concerns about the risks faced by LGBTQI+ people in Georgia and in December 2023, a new country policy and information note: sexual orientation and gender identity and expression was published for Georgia. This note was no doubt published to support the addition of Georgia to the list of countries at section 80AA (the addition happened in April 2024 but use of this list is not currently in force), meaning that asylum or human rights claims made by nationals of those countries would be deemed inadmissible unless there are exceptional circumstances.

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also raised concerns about the addition of Georgia to the list.

The commentary

The commentary looks at the Home Office’s assessment of risk from state actors, risk from non-state actors and protection. It sets out inconsistencies between the conclusions on risk in the assessment section and what country information is referred to elsewhere in the note. The commentary then looks at what more recent sources have said in relation to each area of risk.

One example of the inconsistencies is between the Home Office’s assessment of risk from state actors and the country of information evidence. For example, the executive summary states that politicians’ “anti-LGBTI rhetoric has fuelled violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community”. Yet the conclusion under “Risk” is that “In general, LGBTI persons do not face treatment from state actors which is sufficiently serious by its nature or repetition, or by an accumulation of measures, that amounts to persecution or serious harm. The onus is on the person to demonstrate otherwise.”

It is pointed out that:

this generalised assessment understates the pervasive nature and severe consequences of such rhetoric, some of which may in its own right be considered to amount to persecution. In particular, COI indicates that the Georgian authorities’ rhetoric has played an active role in legitimising violence and harassment against LGBTQI+ persons, not only ‘occasionally’ or in the context of Pride events, but in everyday life and in pre-election contexts

Several examples are given of evidence elsewhere in the country note that contradicts the Home Office’s conclusion on risk from state actors. This includes paragraph 8.1.7 which refers to a joint statement issued by, amongst others, the United Nations in Georgia, the Delegation of the European Union to Georgia and the British Embassy and states: “Stigmatization, discriminatory language and hate speech by some public officials, politicians, media and religious figures incite further harassment against LGBTQI+ persons and threaten their lives.”

The commentary also notes that two sources cited in the country information section were completely omitted from the assessment of risk from state actors. These were from the US Department of State and Reuters and both “indicate that the Georgian authorities actively colluded with ‘anti-LGBT protesters’ to cause violent disruption to Pride events”.

The accompanying report by Asylos contains country information that is more recent than the Home Office’s country note and this should be used as up to date objective evidence that demonstrates the risks faced by LGBTQI+ people in Georgia.

Key issues

The key issues are summarised as follows:

• Asylos’ analysis shows that the UK Home Office’s assessment of the situation of LGBTQI+ persons in Georgia often fails to fully reflect the COI included in its December 2023 Georgia: SOGIE CPIN. In particular, the assessment:

a) does not fully acknowledge the normalised role of hostile rhetoric in encouraging societal violence towards LGBTQI+ people, not only ‘occasionally’ or in the context of Pride events, but in everyday life;

b) risks minimising COI that points to the existence of entrenched negative societal attitudes, and consistent reports of societal violence directed towards LGBTQI+ people;

c) fails to fully consider COI indicating failures in the Georgian authorities’ ability to protect LGBTQI+ persons and hold perpetrators of violence to account – including, but not limited to the context of Pride events held in Tbilisi. 

• Recent COI published subsequent to the December 2023 Georgia: SOGIE CPIN, suggests no improvement in the situation of LGBTQI+ Georgians, in particular following the introduction of a proposed law on the ‘Protection of Family Values and Minors’ in March 2024. If passed into legislation, this law would see serious curtailments to the rights of LGBTQI+ Georgians, including a ban on same-sex marriage, prohibition on gender reassignment surgery and the possibility of legal recognition of a gender change, as well as a probition on public gatherings that promote same-sex relationships or identification with other genders, and the sharing of information in schools and the media that could be perceived as ‘LGBTQI+ propaganda’.

Conclusion

This is your periodic reminder not to take the Home Office’s assessment of risk in a country policy and information note at face value, and that you may not even need to look any further than the rest of the report in order to find evidence to contradict that assessment.

On a separate point, the UK has a history of failing to take the existence and safety of LGBTQI+ people into account when devising and using safe lists (see R (Brown (Jamaica)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] UKSC 8). A different safe country list at section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 explicitly includes Nigerian and Ghanaian men as having asylum claims that can be certified (i.e. refused without the right of appeal), despite gay and bisexual men from both countries facing persecution and being recognised as refugees here.

The Asylos commentary notes that the Netherlands has also designated Georgia as safe, but with an exclusion for LGBTQI+ people. It is noteworthy that there are no equivalent exclusions in the UK for LGBTQI+ people in respect of any of the “safe” countries, no matter how unsafe they are for this group. This needs to change.

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