Facts and Statistics

Torture/Non-refoulement Claim Cases
(as at End of June 2025)

^[1] The Court of First Instance of the High Court (CFI) held in December 2008 that the Administration should provide legal assistance to a torture claimant during the screening process and provide suitable training for the decision makers. The Immigration Department (ImmD) then suspended all screening works.

^[2] The Legislative Council passed the Immigration (Amendment) Ordinance 2009 in November 2009, making it an offence for illegal immigrants to take any employment or establish or join in any business. The ImmD implemented the enhanced administrative mechanism in December 2009.

^[3] This includes 93 reviewed cases.

^[4] On commencement of the Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) on 3 March 2014, there were 2 501 outstanding torture claims. Separately, 4 198 persons have lodged non-refoulement claims on applicable grounds (other than torture) (in which 2 962 cases were lodged by rejected or withdrawn torture claimants), making a total of 6 699 non-refoulement claims pending determination on commencement of the USM.

^[5] From 2020 to early 2021, due to the special work arrangements during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, only limited publicly-funded legal assistance could be provided to claimants, which delayed the commencement of the screening procedure of some claims.

Between the commencement of the enhanced administrative mechanism (late 2009) and June 2025, determinations have been made in 32 421 torture/non-refoulement claims, among which 366 were substantiated. A breakdown by nationality of the substantiated claimants is as follows:

As at 30 June 2025, there were 747 outstanding non-refoulement claims and breakdown on the profiling of the claimants is as follows: