The Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by two anonymised international protection applicants who said criminal actors threatened them in Georgia and Albania.
The cases of Z.M., a Georgian national, and N.G., an Albanian national, were heard together because both raised the same central question: whether a finding that a person faces a real risk of serious harm necessarily means that effective protection from their home state is unavailable.
Ms Justice Butler, delivering the court's judgment, held that these are closely linked but distinct elements of an international protection claim. A decision-maker can first find that threats from non-state actors create a real risk of serious harm and then separately examine whether the authorities in the applicant's country can provide effective protection.
In Z.M.'s case, the tribunal accepted that he faced a real risk of harm from a man involved in a long-running criminal feud. However, it relied on previous police investigations and prosecutions, country information and Georgia's designation as a safe country of origin in finding that state protection was available.
N.G. said former work colleagues in Albania had threatened him after accusing him of taking money from a restaurant business. The tribunal accepted the essential elements of his account but noted that he had never reported the threats to Albanian police. It also considered evidence of functioning criminal investigations and prosecutions in Albania.
The Court of Appeal held that effective state protection does not require authorities to eliminate every possibility of harm. The legal test is whether reasonable and effective protective steps are available, including a functioning system for investigating, prosecuting and punishing criminal conduct.
The court also rejected Z.M.'s separate challenges concerning the standard of proof for past events and the tribunal's rejection as implausible of his claim that Georgian police told him to leave the country or risk being framed.
Both appeals were dismissed. The respondents were provisionally awarded one set of costs for the combined hearing.