The High Court quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting a Cameroonian woman’s appeal for refugee status and ordered that her case be reconsidered by a different tribunal member.
In a judgment delivered on 26 November 2015, Mr Justice Eagar found that the tribunal had overlooked a counsellor’s letter about the applicant’s health, relied on speculation about t-shirts worn by a protest group, and unreasonably assessed her account of reporting fires at her homes to police.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as N.N. (Cameroon), sought judicial review of the tribunal’s decision affirming the Refugee Applications Commissioner’s recommendation that she not be declared a refugee. She said she had led an association promoting the rights of sexual minorities in Cameroon, was detained and assaulted by police after a protest, and feared police would kill her if she returned. Those were her claims; the tribunal had rejected her account on credibility grounds.
The tribunal had accepted that criminalising homosexual activity in Cameroon could be discriminatory. It focused on whether the applicant’s claimed association involvement and the events she described were credible. Among its concerns were her evidence about two women whose deaths were discussed in association documents, inconsistencies in reports concerning fires at her homes, and photographs it considered insufficient to establish that a protest concerned gay rights.
The High Court did not rehear the asylum claim or decide whether the applicant was a refugee. It reviewed whether the tribunal’s process was legally sound. Justice Eagar said the tribunal had stated that there was no evidence of the applicant’s health since she arrived in Ireland, although a letter from a Galway Rape Crisis Centre counsellor had described health issues. The judge noted that the letter was not a doctor’s report, but found that the tribunal appeared to have ignored it.
The judge also found that the tribunal’s reasoning about the t-shirts involved conjecture and speculation. On the fire reports, he said the tribunal had not adequately dealt with the applicant’s account of detention and alleged rape by police when assessing why she reported the fires to police despite the inconsistencies between the reports. The judgment further criticised the tribunal’s approach of treating an early credibility concern as undermining its consideration of other evidence.
The court granted certiorari, quashing the tribunal’s decision, and remitted the matter for determination by another tribunal member. The ruling did not itself grant refugee status or make a final finding on the underlying claims.