The High Court has quashed the Minister’s 2010 refusal of subsidiary protection to an anonymised Ugandan applicant and sent her case back for fresh consideration. It did not decide that she qualifies for protection or that her account of the alleged abuse was proved.
The judicial review concerned whether the Minister had properly considered the applicant’s claim that she had suffered serious harm and whether compelling reasons arising from past harm alone could support protection under the European Communities (Subsidiary Protection) Regulations 2006.
The applicant said she was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda and later detained by government forces in Kampala. She alleged that during detention she was beaten, raped and burned. Those claims were contested in the protection process. Medical reports from the Centre for the Care of Survivors of Torture described injuries as “consistent” with her account, while the Refugee Appeal Tribunal said the reports could not establish how the injuries or illnesses were caused. The Minister’s refusal relied on credibility concerns and concluded that substantial grounds had not been shown for believing she would face serious harm on return.
Mr Justice Hogan said the medical evidence indicated that the applicant had suffered serious injuries intentionally inflicted by another person or people. But the reports did not establish who caused them or how. The Minister had referred to the reports’ use of “consistent” and to the Tribunal’s doubts, but had not reached a clear view on the critical question of whether the injuries amounted to serious harm under the regulations, including whether state actors might have inflicted them.
The judge also found that the Minister had not considered the regulations’ “counter-exception”: even where there are good reasons to think past serious harm will not be repeated, compelling reasons arising from that past harm alone may still warrant protection. A 2009 medical letter said forced return would reinforce the applicant’s negative impressions following her trauma. Assessing that evidence and deciding whether the counter-exception applied were matters for the Minister in the first instance, the judge said, but the Minister had to consider them.
The court therefore quashed the refusal dated 4 April 2010 and remitted the matter to the Minister for fresh consideration. The ruling did not determine whether the applicant’s account was true, whether she faced a future risk, or whether she should receive subsidiary protection.