The High Court has rejected a Nigerian child’s challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision recommending that she not be granted refugee status. The court said the child had not established substantial grounds for judicial review and concluded that the application was unsuccessful.
The child, identified in the judgment as S. O., arrived in Ireland in 2005, aged three, with her mother. Her asylum claim initially centred on her mother’s fear that family members would force the child to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) if returned to Nigeria. The claim was later expanded to include the child’s sickle cell condition and alleged inadequate treatment and discrimination in Nigeria.
The Tribunal found the FGM fear was not well founded, reasoning that the child’s educated parents opposed the practice and could protect her. It also considered state protection and relocation within Nigeria. The child did not challenge the Tribunal’s separate finding that treatment for sickle cell disease was available in Nigeria, although it might not be free.
In the judicial review, the applicant argued that the Tribunal had failed to identify a specific area for relocation and had not properly considered her health. The respondents said the decision should be read as a whole and that the family’s circumstances had been considered.
Justice M. H. Clark held that the Tribunal’s decision was that the child was not at risk of FGM, rather than that she faced a risk but could avoid it by relocating. The judge said the family’s opposition to FGM, the parents’ circumstances and the family’s life in Lagos supported the finding that the claimed risk was minimal, if it existed at all.
The court explained that where relocation is decisive to refusing asylum to someone otherwise found to have a well-founded fear of persecution, the decision-maker must identify a general location and follow the relevant regulations and UNHCR guidelines. In this case, because the Tribunal found no well-founded fear of persecution, relocation in the legal sense was not necessary. The failure to identify a specific destination was therefore immaterial.
The court also declined to decide the challenge to the Tribunal’s assessment of state protection. It said that issue was unnecessary to resolve once it had found the no-risk conclusion reasonable. The application was unsuccessful. The judge added that the child’s time in Ireland could be relevant to a future application to remain on humanitarian grounds, noting her sickle cell condition and lack of exposure to tropical diseases such as malaria.