The High Court has quashed a 2010 Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing a Nigerian mother and her two sons refugee status, ruling that the tribunal failed to assess the core claim that one child faced forced traditional circumcision if returned to Nigeria.
In a judgment delivered on 6 February 2015, Ms Justice Stewart ordered the case remitted to the tribunal for a de novo consideration by a different member. The court did not decide the protection claim itself. It also declined to rule on the applicants’ separate challenge to the tribunal’s internal relocation assessment.
The mother’s account, as summarised in the judgment, was that her older son had been forcibly circumcised at the family home in Nigeria in 2006. She said her husband’s family later told her they intended to circumcise her unborn child according to tradition, threatened her after she refused, and that she went into hiding before leaving Nigeria with her older son. Her younger son was born in Ireland in 2008.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal affirmed the refusal recommendation in May 2010. It made adverse credibility findings, including about the father’s departure, addresses and the family’s travel. It also found that relocation to Lagos or Abuja would not be unduly harsh. The tribunal considered a hospital report concerning the older child and a letter from a friend, but said they were not sufficiently compelling to overturn the refusal recommendation in light of credibility concerns.
Justice Stewart found that the tribunal had not made findings on whether the older child had undergone forced circumcision or whether the younger child faced a similar risk on return. The judgment said the documents were prima facie relevant to those issues and criticised the tribunal for rejecting them without giving reasons that addressed their significance to the core claim.
The judge also held that the tribunal erred in relying on section 11B(b) of the Refugee Act in its credibility assessment: the applicants had not claimed Ireland was the first safe country they reached after leaving Nigeria. As to section 11B(c), the tribunal had not explained why that provision applied or what relevance it had to the claim.
The court stated that forced circumcision by traditional means could, depending on the circumstances, amount to serious assault and give rise to a need for international protection under section 5(2) of the Act. That was a conditional legal observation, not a finding that the children had been persecuted or were at risk. The fresh tribunal consideration will address the claim; the High Court made no determination on its merits.