The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee status to a mother and her minor son, finding that the Tribunal had failed to assess the potential risk they might face if returned to Nagorno-Karabakh. The case was remitted in full for rehearing before a different Tribunal member.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice McDermott on 5 September 2014, concerned a judicial review of the Tribunal’s 2008 decision. The applicants, identified in the judgment as M.A. and E.M., had arrived in Ireland in August 2007 after leaving Nagorno-Karabakh and later Turkey. The mother is described as being of mixed Armenian and Azeri ethnicity.
The Tribunal had rejected their appeal on credibility grounds. It cited the mother’s inability to identify the ethnicity, nationality and motives of alleged persecutors, inconsistencies between her account and her father’s, and doubts about when she learned of her brother’s death. The High Court noted that, although parts of the account were not believed, the Tribunal accepted the mother’s mixed ethnic background and the existence of ethnic conflict in the region.
The mother argued that the Tribunal had not considered whether those accepted circumstances could expose her and her son to future persecution. The respondents argued that doubts about credibility meant the Tribunal was not required to apply a forward-looking risk assessment. They also raised state protection and possible relocation elsewhere in Azerbaijan.
The court held that the Tribunal had not analysed the current situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the possibility of renewed upheaval, daily conditions for a young woman and child, or risks to people of mixed ethnicity. It said those matters were necessary to assess future risk. The court also declined to consider state protection and relocation arguments that had not formed part of the Tribunal’s decision, describing that as speculative.
The court granted certiorari, setting aside the Tribunal decision. It did not itself decide whether the applicants qualified for refugee status; the matter must be heard again by a different Tribunal member.