The High Court has quashed the part of an international protection appeal decision that rejected a Pakistani man’s claim for subsidiary protection, finding that he should have had an opportunity to address a significant country report relied on by the tribunal.
In a judgment delivered on 2 June 2021, Ms Justice Tara Burns ordered that the subsidiary protection issue be reconsidered by another member of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal. The court also awarded the applicant his costs against the respondents. It did not quash the whole appeal decision.
The applicant, identified as ZA, is from Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province. He claimed his family had beaten, imprisoned and threatened him after he refused to marry his cousin, and that he feared returning. The International Protection Officer and, on appeal, the tribunal rejected the material elements of his account as not credible.
The protection decisions also considered whether he faced serious harm from indiscriminate violence linked to armed conflict. The officer found that the risk in Sialkot, together with the applicant’s personal circumstances, met the relevant threshold, and found state protection unavailable there. The officer nevertheless considered that he could relocate to Karachi and recommended against subsidiary protection.
The tribunal reached a different view of the country of origin information, including an October 2019 European Asylum Support Office report. It noted that the report said cross-border shelling had affected civilians in Sialkot in 2018, but that there was no evidence of this in the first seven months of 2019.
The applicant argued that the report had not been brought to his attention before the tribunal decided the appeal, denying him an opportunity to make submissions. The respondents argued that practitioners should know current, readily available country information and that the tribunal had assessed the information as a whole, rather than relying only on the 2019 report.
The High Court accepted that the tribunal was conducting a de novo appeal and was not bound by the officer’s findings. It also noted that case law does not generally require decision-makers to notify representatives about every update to readily available country information. But the court held that the circumstances of this case were different: the 2018 report had particular significance for the applicant, and the 2019 report changed its import. Given that change’s importance to the risk assessment, the tribunal should have disclosed the report and invited submissions.
The court found breaches of the audi alteram partem principle and section 46(8)(b) of the International Protection Act 2015, which requires written notice of the nature and source of other information relating to an appeal. The court said no indication about the 2019 report had been given. It emphasized that the subsidiary protection assessment was an objective assessment of risk from indiscriminate violence and did not depend on the credibility findings about the applicant’s personal account.