About This Service
The family unity of a person with international protection is a value protected by Georgian legislation: the Law on Refugees regulates the procedure of family reunification separately, and that procedure binds the administration. This page explains the principle of family unity and the extension of status flowing from it (Article 11), as well as the reunification procedure — from the application to the decision (Article 46). The two norms together build the full story: the first sets the goal — family unity — and the second governs the road toward it; they must therefore be read together, not separately. Reunification is also a fully-fledged legal category in Georgian legislation: each of its stages — application, evidence, examination, decision — proceeds in a prescribed form, and a breach of that form itself becomes a procedural dispute.
The Principle of Family Unity
Article 11 provides that the Ministry must ensure the family unity of a person with international protection, and every family member has the right to have the application for international protection examined individually. The rule of extending status proceeds from the same principle: where a person has been granted the status of a refugee, or of a person under humanitarian or temporary protection, or a humanitarian status has been extended or a temporary protection term prolonged, the family member living together with that person — as well as a minor whose legal representative, guardian, custodian or supporter is that person — is granted the same status, or has it extended or prolonged accordingly. The exception operates only where grounds for refusal provided by law exist — which means the norm works by presumption: a family member receives status by virtue of being a family member, and the state needs a legally substantiated reason to refuse, not a general administrative view. The right to individual examination belongs to the same logic: each member's application is considered separately, excluding a blanket resolution of the others' fate on one member's file.