The High Court has quashed a decision refusing a Pakistani man’s appeal for international protection, finding that the Tribunal failed to properly address newer country reports about sectarian violence against Shia Muslims. The case was sent back to the Tribunal for a fresh assessment by a different member. The court did not decide whether the man qualifies for protection.
The applicant, a Shia Muslim from Pakistan’s Punjab region, sought judicial review of a 10 June 2020 decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT). That decision had upheld the International Protection Office’s recommendation that he receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection.
The Tribunal accepted that the applicant was Shia and had been involved in building an Imambargah, a Shia place of worship and meeting place. It did not accept his account that he had received threats and been shot at because of the project. It also found that his protection claim was not generally credible, citing inconsistencies in his accounts and delay in seeking protection.
The Tribunal considered whether he would face persecution because he was Shia, even after rejecting his account of past persecution. It relied on a 2017 European Asylum Support Office report, including information that sectarian attacks had decreased and that most such violence occurred outside Punjab. It concluded that the information and the applicant’s circumstances did not show a real chance of religious persecution in Punjab.
The applicant argued that IPAT had failed to engage with more recent material he had submitted, including US reports from 2018 and 2019. The respondents argued that the claim’s core account of a gun attack had been rejected on credibility grounds, allowing the Tribunal to refuse the claim.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter found that the Tribunal had accepted key parts of the applicant’s case, including his faith, his involvement in the Imambargah project and the existence of sectarian violence against Shia Muslims in Pakistan. Having assessed whether those accepted facts and the country information supported a risk of persecution, the Tribunal had to engage with the newer reports or explain why it preferred the older material, the judge said.
The 2019 US Commission on International Religious Freedom report described worsening religious freedom conditions in Pakistan and reported attacks on minorities, including Shia Muslims, with examples concerning Punjab. The court found that IPAT had wrongly relied on the earlier report without explaining why it preferred it over the later reports. Its finding that the applicant lacked a well-founded fear of persecution was therefore unlawfully reached.
The court quashed the 10 June 2020 decision and remitted the matter for a fresh assessment by a different Tribunal member. It did not rule on the applicant’s other grounds of challenge.