The High Court has refused a Nigerian woman’s application for judicial review of a decision rejecting her claim for refugee status. Mr Justice David Keane delivered judgment on 19 June 2019.
The challenge concerned a decision of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), then known as the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, dated 1 November 2016. The tribunal had accepted that the woman had a well-founded fear of persecution by non-state actors in Nigeria, but found she had not shown that adequate state protection would be unavailable. It also found no compelling reasons arising from past persecution to support refugee recognition.
The woman, identified in the judgment as I.L., claimed she feared a religious cult and would be killed if returned to Nigeria. The Refugee Applications Commissioner had recommended in March 2015 that she not be declared a refugee. The tribunal affirmed that recommendation after an appeal hearing in September 2016. She sought judicial review, asking principally for the tribunal decision to be quashed.
Justice Keane rejected her argument that the tribunal had selectively considered country information about police misconduct and corruption in Nigeria. He said the tribunal had considered material describing those problems as well as measures to address them, and had also considered the woman’s account of receiving practical help from police. The court held that the tribunal was entitled to conclude that adequate state protection was available in her circumstances.
The court also rejected the challenge to the tribunal’s assessment of the “compelling reasons” clause. The tribunal had concluded that the experiences described by the woman did not reach the required level of seriousness. Justice Keane found no basis to overturn that assessment, observing that the tribunal had addressed the relevant factual claims and that the threshold was a matter for the decision-maker to assess in the circumstances of the case.
A further challenge concerned two Nigerian police reports submitted by the woman: one relating to the alleged kidnapping of her daughter, and another recording a reported attack at a residence. The tribunal had declined to rely on the reports, noting that they came through the woman’s ex-husband, whose reliability she had questioned. It accepted other material facts about past persecution.
The judge held there was no general duty on decision-makers to investigate the authenticity of documents submitted in an international protection claim. He found no special circumstances requiring an inquiry in this case. Among the reasons, the tribunal had accepted the woman’s account of the reported attack, while the kidnapping report did not link the incident to the alleged cult; the woman could also have made inquiries herself.
The application for judicial review was refused. The judgment does not grant the requested order to quash the tribunal decision.