The High Court has refused a Pakistani mother and daughter’s application to quash a decision refusing them international protection, finding no legal error in the appeals tribunal’s assessment. The applicants were also ordered to pay the respondents’ costs.
The applicants had sought refugee or subsidiary protection based on claimed risks in Pakistan. The mother said neighbours had harassed her family and kidnapped her son while her husband was working in Saudi Arabia. The pair later claimed that, during a visit to Ireland in 2017, they learned that the husband’s boss and landlord wanted to marry the daughter, then 16, and that the husband had felt pressured to agree.
They said the mother opposed the marriage and wanted her daughter to continue her education. They claimed the dispute led to their separation from the husband, leaving the mother and daughter at risk if returned to Pakistan as a single-parent family. These were the applicants’ claims, not findings by the High Court.
The International Protection Appeals Tribunal accepted as credible the account of harassment and the son’s kidnapping. It did not accept that the husband wanted the daughter to stop her education and marry, citing, among other things, his sending documents needed for her education in Ireland. The tribunal also rejected the claimed estrangement. It found that feared attacks or harassment against a single mother and daughter could amount to persecution, but concluded the claimed future risks were not established because the mother was not found to be separated from her husband.
The applicants argued in the judicial review that the tribunal had inadequately considered information about forced marriage in Pakistan and failed to assess whether the mother might return without her husband even if they were not estranged. The respondents submitted that assessing that possibility would be speculative.
Ms Justice Tara Burns held that the country information had limited relevance to the specific claim, which concerned pressure on the husband from his boss and landlord. The tribunal’s credibility conclusion was open to it, the judge said. She also found the applicants’ case had been that the mother was estranged and would return alone—not that the couple remained together but chose to live apart for work. The tribunal was not required to consider that unadvanced scenario, or to determine how the couple would arrange their affairs.
The court ruled that section 28(6) of the International Protection Act 2015 did not require the tribunal to consider whether the husband would return to Pakistan with the applicants. It refused the requested order of certiorari, leaving the tribunal’s decision in place, and ordered costs in favour of the respondents.