The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee status to an anonymised Nigerian applicant and remitted the matter to the Tribunal for rehearing.
In a judgment delivered on 28 July 2015, Mr Justice MacEochaidh said the Tribunal had fundamentally misunderstood the claim and made unclear or inaccurate findings about the applicant’s evidence. The court did not decide whether the applicant qualified for refugee status; that issue returns to the Tribunal.
The applicant said he feared the family of a Muslim woman with whom he had a relationship, because he was a Christian. He said her family blamed him after she became pregnant and later died, and that he had been threatened. He also claimed that property belonging to his uncle had been destroyed. These were the applicant’s accounts, not findings made by the High Court.
The Tribunal had refused the claim, reasoning that the dispute arose from a pregnancy outside marriage rather than the applicant’s religion, and that he had not shown the Nigerian police could not protect him or that he could not relocate within Nigeria.
The High Court found that the Tribunal had no evidential basis for treating premarital pregnancy as the sole or main cause of the family’s hostility. The applicant had repeatedly linked his fear to religious differences, the judge said, and that was the claim the Tribunal had to assess. The court also criticised the Tribunal’s handling of whether the woman had been forced by her family to take traditional medicine. The decision appeared to give conflicting accounts of the applicant’s evidence on that central issue without explaining its conclusion.
The judge also said it was inaccurate to state that the applicant gave no reason for not seeking police protection. The applicant had explained that he believed the woman’s father had influence with the police; the Tribunal could reject that explanation, but it had to describe the evidence fairly.
The court could not tell whether the Tribunal rejected the claim on credibility grounds, because the fear was not well founded, because it lacked a connection to a Convention reason, or because state protection or internal relocation was available. It therefore quashed the decision and remitted the case. The judgment did not grant refugee status or make a final finding on the applicant’s account.