The High Court has granted four children leave to pursue a judicial review challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision upholding the refusal of their applications for refugee status.
In a judgment delivered on 18 March 2009, Ms Justice Clark said the children had shown substantial grounds to argue that the Tribunal had not adequately considered their claim that they faced a particular risk as members of the Kalabari people. The ruling grants leave to argue the case further; it does not determine the judicial review or grant refugee status.
The children, who were minors, came from the Kalabari region of Nigeria’s Niger Delta and were described as Ijaw. They applied for refugee status after arriving in Ireland in October 2006, and their mother acted for them. Their applications were refused by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal upheld those refusals after an oral hearing.
The children’s case included claims that their father and maternal grandfather had links to the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, and that the children could be targeted because of their family and ethnic associations. They also described widespread violence in the Delta region. The Tribunal treated their fear as a generalised fear of random violence, rather than persecution for a reason recognised under refugee law.
The children argued that the Tribunal had made factual errors and failed to engage with appeal materials, including country-of-origin information and a newspaper notice concerning their grandfather’s reported disappearance. The respondents maintained that the errors did not affect the decision and that the evidence did not establish that the children were specifically targeted.
Justice Clark noted that the Tribunal had incorrectly said the children’s birth certificates were not produced, although they were on file. She considered that error immaterial to the outcome on its own. She also found it arguable that the Tribunal had misstated aspects of the mother’s evidence. The judgment records that one child had been sexually assaulted while sheltering during an attack, but says the Tribunal’s failure to mention that incident did not establish the claimed targeting on a protected ground.
Viewed together, however, the court considered the errors, references to the mother’s failed asylum claim and the treatment of the children’s claimed ethnicity raised substantial grounds for further argument. Leave was granted on that basis.