Migrants and refugees with children should be granted permanent residency in Italy, the country’s highest court has ruled.

The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favor of a Libyan mother of twins born in the Italian city of Brescia in January 2017, saying children are a factor that heightens the “vulnerability” of refugees and migrants, and this cannot be ignored by the Interior Ministry or judges. 

The ministry had refused protection to the woman, only known by her initials A. L.  A court in Brescia had ruled that she “did not have specific personal and family problems.”  

For this reason, in June 2019 it gave the green light for the repatriation of the mother and her twins. Her lawyer Massimo Gilardoni filed an appeal.

The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the two children are “one of the personal and family issues that the judge should have considered.”

The binding principle outlined by the highest court is that “the presence of underage children in Italy” proves “on the one hand a particular fragility of the single members of the family and of the family as a whole, and on the other a specific profile of integration of the household in the national territory.”

The family’s integration is “related to the inclusion of children in social contexts and in schools in Italy and, as a consequence, their natural tendency to absorb the values and concepts on which Italian society is founded,” the ruling added. 

“In order to recognize humanitarian protection, the presence of underage children represents one of the elements that must be taken in account in evaluating whether a parent is vulnerable.”

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