The High Court has refused a Botswana woman’s application to quash an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision that denied her refugee status or subsidiary protection.
In a judgment delivered on 6 January 2025, Ms Justice Marguerite Bolger found that the Tribunal’s assessment of the woman’s credibility did not meet the high legal threshold for irrationality. The court did not reconsider her protection claim or make a fresh decision on her eligibility.
The woman challenged findings about her account of threats and harassment after a land dispute. The Tribunal accepted that she and her husband were involved in a dispute with a man identified in the judgment as Mr M over land they had bought in 2011 and on which they built houses, including their home.
She said that after they left the home in July 2019, her car windows were broken in April or May 2020 and Mr M sent her text messages. She said she no longer had the messages on her phone. The Tribunal found that she had not reasonably explained why she had not mentioned them in her earlier protection interview, and treated the inconsistency as a negative credibility indicator.
The Tribunal also considered her account vague and lacking expected detail. It noted that she had not explained how the alleged harassment stopped in July 2021, why she was targeted, or why she attributed threats in 2020 to legal action when the first letter from her lawyer to Mr M was dated 16 February 2021. The Tribunal did not accept, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr M had threatened her after she moved to Mahalapye.
The applicant argued that these findings were irrational or unfair. She said the harassment stopping was within Mr M’s knowledge, that her dispute with him predated her lawyer’s letter, and that some concerns had not been put to her for comment.
Justice Bolger held that the Tribunal was entitled to consider the missing text messages and the other concerns together. She said the reasons allowed the applicant and the court to understand the basis for the credibility conclusions. The judge also found no procedural unfairness in the Tribunal not putting every concern to the applicant, including its questions about why she alone was threatened when her husband was also involved in the dispute.
As none of the challenged findings was found irrational, the judge said it was unnecessary to decide whether the doctrine of severability applied. She refused certiorari. The respondents’ indicative position on costs was that they should receive their costs, with the matter listed for submissions and any other final orders on 4 February 2025.