Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum
About the SOGICA Project
SOGICA was a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) exploring the social and legal experiences of asylum seekers across Europe claiming international protection on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI). SOGI-related human rights violations are the basis of an apparently increasing number of asylum claims in Europe. Previous research and empirical evidence, while not comprehensive, suggests that these claims are often treated in an insensitive, inappropriate or inconsistent manner across Europe and also within individual states. These claims are also of a striking complexity, and have significance for the purposes of assessing the efficiency and fairness of asylum adjudication systems in general. Focusing on Germany, Italy and the UK as case studies, and analysing how SOGI related claims are addressed at European level – covering the European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) – the project has sought to determine how European asylum systems can treat asylum claims based on the claimant’s SOGI more fairly.
The project formally ended in October 2020. We are maintaining the SOGICA project website, including our database of resources. Please feel free to email us at info@sogica.org with any questions or suggestions about any aspect of the SOGICA project, or about any training or other initiatives you are planning and to which we might contribute.
We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who made time to contribute to our Project: you have given a significant boost to SOGICA’s evidence base and helped us enormously in our task of identifying critical areas for improvement in SOGI asylum in Europe.
To know more, explore our website and consult, in particular:
- our final Recommendations addressed to the European Union, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom
- our publications, including our Survey report, and
- the proceedings of our final Conference.
Thank you to all our friends and supporters!
