The High Court has rejected a Nigerian woman’s challenge to the refusal of international protection while confirming that her separate assessment as a potential victim of human trafficking remains open.
E.A., born in 1969, claimed she was promised nanny work in the UK but was instead trafficked from Nigeria in April 2022 and forced into sexual exploitation in the UK and later Ireland. She said she escaped in June 2022 and applied for international protection.
The International Protection Office rejected her application in 2023. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal upheld that decision in December 2023 after finding significant inconsistencies in her account.
In judicial review proceedings, E.A. argued that the Tribunal mishandled evidence from Ruhama, a Garda notice identifying her as a potential trafficking victim, country information about trafficking from Nigeria and the effect of trauma on credibility.
Mr Justice Conleth Bradley rejected those grounds. He held that the Tribunal had considered country information and the involvement of Ruhama, and was entitled to find that the Garda notice merely recorded a referral as a potential victim rather than independently corroborating her account.
The court also found that the Tribunal’s adverse credibility findings were based on inconsistencies in E.A.’s own evidence rather than conjecture. These included differing accounts of when she met the alleged trafficker, how many women travelled with her, the alleged debt arrangements and events surrounding her journey.
A separate issue concerned Ireland’s trafficking referral system. The court accepted that IPO procedures requiring potential trafficking cases to be referred to Gardaí had not been followed at E.A.’s initial interviews. However, it found that this caused no actionable prejudice.
The judge held that an international protection applicant is not barred from being formally identified as a trafficking victim. The protection and trafficking processes can operate in parallel, while the applicant already benefits from permission to remain and reception supports during the protection process.
The judicial review was therefore refused. The IPAT refusal remains effective, but E.A.’s Garda trafficking assessment had not concluded and could still result in further identification under the national referral mechanism.