The High Court has rejected an infant applicant’s judicial review challenge to a decision declining to recommend refugee status, finding no legal error sufficient to warrant intervention at this stage of the asylum process.
In a judgment delivered on 6 July 2015, Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh said the decision-maker had accepted that the harm feared by the child—forced female genital mutilation in Nigeria—was persecutory in nature. The refusal instead rested on the availability of state protection or internal relocation within Nigeria.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as O. J. U., was born in Ireland in 2008 and applied for asylum in February 2010. Her mother said she feared village elders would force the child to undergo FGM. The Commissioner’s authorised official recommended in April 2010 that the child not receive refugee status, concluding that protection would be available through her guardian and that moving elsewhere in Nigeria was a viable option.
The applicant argued that the Commissioner had failed to assess relevant country information about protection in Nigeria, consider her personal circumstances, and properly assess internal relocation. Her submissions also challenged the objectivity of the assessment and the currency and sources of the information relied upon.
The judge described the state-protection reasoning as “somewhat sparse” and said a decision on that issue should refer to a source confirming that protection exists or to the presumption that functioning states protect their people. But he said the challenge did not identify in sufficient detail what relevant facts had been overlooked or how that omission could have affected the result. He added that, even if an error had occurred, it was not grave enough to justify intervention at that stage.
The court rejected the personal-circumstances argument, noting that the decision expressly treated the feared harm as persecution and referred to the child’s age, gender and background. It also found that the allegations about objectivity and internal relocation were not supported with enough detail or evidence. The judge said the relocation analysis was not rich in detail, but the applicant had not shown which personal circumstances should have been considered or how they might have changed the outcome.
The court rejected the application for judicial review. It did not itself decide an asylum claim on the merits or grant refugee status; it reviewed the legality of the Commissioner’s decision.