The High Court has quashed a refusal of subsidiary protection and a deportation order against an anonymised applicant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, finding that the Minister’s assessment of the rule of law and state protection in Kinshasa was unreasonable.
In a judgment delivered on 10 September 2013, Mr Justice McDermott said the country information before the decision maker did not support the conclusion that the applicant could return to Kinshasa, where the rule of law existed and authorities could provide protection.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as S.S.L., arrived in Ireland in 2009 and sought asylum. His asylum application was refused by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in May 2010. The judgment recounts that the tribunal disbelieved his account of political persecution, including claims about the deaths of family members and attacks by government forces. Those credibility findings were not challenged in the judicial review.
The Minister refused the applicant’s subsidiary protection application in May 2011 and made a deportation order in August 2011. The applicant was granted leave to seek judicial review on one ground: that representations and country information had been read selectively against his interests and the resulting conclusions were irrational.
The court’s review was limited to that ground. It did not reopen the earlier credibility findings or the Minister’s conclusions on the claimed risk of execution, torture or treatment that would be inhuman or degrading. The central issue was whether the Minister could reasonably conclude that state protection was available in Kinshasa.
The judgment reviewed country information describing killings, violence against demonstrators, police abuses and serious weaknesses in the Congolese justice system. It said the Minister’s conclusion that the rule of law existed in Kinshasa rested on an isolated passage about police handling of riots in 2005, despite the wider material.
Mr Justice McDermott found that a reasonable assessment of the country information could not support that conclusion. He said the evidence showed that authorities could not reasonably be expected to protect citizens from the conditions described, and that life in and around Kinshasa could give rise to a risk of indiscriminate violence amounting to a real risk of serious harm.
The court quashed the subsidiary protection refusal. The Minister had conceded that if the challenge to that decision succeeded, the deportation order would also be reviewed. The court therefore ordered certiorari in respect of the deportation order as well. The judgment did not grant subsidiary protection or determine a new application; it quashed the challenged decisions.