The High Court has granted leave for a Cameroonian applicant to challenge a refusal of refugee status, finding an arguable issue over whether the Refugee Appeals Tribunal assessed the risk of persecution on return.
In a judgment delivered on 27 June 2012, Ms Justice M. Clark said the challenge could proceed on the sole ground that the Tribunal member failed to apply a forward-looking test when assessing whether the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution.
The ruling concerns leave to seek judicial review of the Tribunal’s 3 October 2008 decision affirming a negative recommendation on the applicant’s asylum claim. The court also found good and sufficient reason to extend the time limit for bringing the proceedings, which had issued about six weeks late.
The applicant claimed he had led a student organisation at Douala University, been arrested and mistreated after a 2005 demonstration, and faced renewed threats after organising a march in 2006. Those were claims in his asylum account, not findings by the High Court. The judgment records that the Tribunal appeared to accept he was a student from Cameroon and accepted that a medical report described scarring, but had raised a credibility concern about his account of being targeted after a period without difficulties with the authorities.
The applicant argued that the Tribunal should have considered whether accepted parts of his history, together with country-of-origin information, indicated future risk. The respondents pointed to inconsistencies in his account and argued that information about Cameroon did not show individual student activists were targeted. They also submitted that returning the case to the Tribunal would serve no purpose.
Justice Clark said refugee status requires a forward-looking assessment. Past events may inform the assessment, but do not determine it. Even where parts of an account are disbelieved, decision-makers must consider other material evidence of risk. The court distinguished cases where the core of an applicant’s claim is rejected, making a future-risk assessment unnecessary, and said it was arguable that this was not such a case.
The court did not decide whether the applicant would face persecution if returned, whether he should receive refugee status, or what country information should be considered. It said those matters were for the administrative decision-maker, not the court on judicial review. The judgment’s final page ends after granting leave on the stated ground; the source does not set out any further order or subsequent outcome.