The High Court has quashed an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting a Malawian man’s appeal and ordered that his appeals be reheard by a different tribunal member.
The court found that the tribunal’s reasoning about whether relatives of people with albinism face risk was unclear in light of country information before it. The ruling did not determine the man’s protection claim; it set aside the tribunal decision and remitted the appeals for rehearing and determination.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as B.C. (Malawi), was born in 1997. He said his twin sister was murdered in Malawi because she had albinism, that he was advised to avoid being seen in public, and that someone attempted to enter his family home. He said he then fled and arrived in Ireland on 12 May 2016.
His asylum application was refused in December 2016. After the International Protection Act 2015 came into effect, he applied for subsidiary protection. That application was refused in November 2017, and the tribunal rejected his appeal in a decision issued on 19 April 2018. The decision was received on or about 26 April, under cover of a letter dated 24 April.
The judicial review challenge was confined to one ground. The tribunal had accepted that the applicant had a sister with albinism, while also expressing significant doubts about his account. It said it had found no country-of-origin information supporting the proposition that relatives of people with albinism were at risk.
Justice Richard Humphreys reviewed material cited in the judgment, including United Nations and Amnesty International publications and a newspaper article. He said the tribunal’s statement was “hard to view as correct as phrased” given that information. The respondents’ lawyer accepted that the material showed relatives faced a risk of discrimination, while disputing that it established persecution.
The judge said it was not clear how the tribunal reconciled its conclusion with the information before it. He treated the problem as a deficit in explaining the tribunal’s reasoning, rather than deciding that the applicant’s account or protection claim had been established.
The court also addressed a timing objection raised in written submissions. The judge said the point had not been pressed with particular vigour and held that the proceedings were in time. He added that any delay was satisfactorily explained in the grounding affidavit.
The court ordered certiorari removing the tribunal decision for the purpose of quashing it, and remitted the applicant’s appeals to another tribunal member for rehearing and determination.