The Court of Appeal has quashed a decision refusing subsidiary protection to an applicant recorded as a national of Cameroon, ruling that the application had to be assessed primarily by reference to that country.
The court allowed F.F.’s appeal from a High Court decision and granted an order of certiorari quashing the Minister’s refusal. It remitted the matter to the Minister for a fresh determination in accordance with law.
The dispute concerned how the 2006 Regulations define an applicant’s country of origin. The regulations refer to the country of nationality or, for a stateless person, the country of former habitual residence. The Minister’s decision recorded F.F. as Cameroonian, while also noting that he had refugee status in Nigeria and Mali. The decision assessed whether he faced serious harm in those countries and concluded that the states would continue to protect him. It did not examine his claimed risk in Cameroon.
F.F. argued that because the decision identified him as a Cameroonian national, the regulations required the Minister to assess his application on that basis. The Minister argued that he had been treated as stateless, with Nigeria and Mali as countries of former habitual residence, and that the assessment could focus on those countries.
The Court of Appeal held that a person cannot simultaneously be treated as both a national of a state and a stateless person under the regulations and the Qualification Directive. If F.F. was a Cameroonian national, Cameroon was the relevant country of origin. The court said potential protection in another country could be considered under the regulations only where there was evidence that the applicant could assert citizenship there.
The court stressed the limits of its ruling: it did not determine whether F.F. was a Cameroonian national or had become stateless when he applied for subsidiary protection. The judgment addressed the legal error arising because the decision recorded him as Cameroonian but did not treat Cameroon as the relevant country of origin. The remitted decision must determine the application in accordance with law.