The High Court granted two sisters leave to seek judicial review of decisions rejecting their asylum appeals, finding substantial grounds to argue that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal had not clearly addressed their claim about gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The related applications were heard together. In a judgment delivered on 19 April 2013, Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh said the sisters had left the DRC in 1999 and arrived in Ireland in April 2006, after spending time in Tanzania and Kenya. They had claimed at first instance that they were beaten and raped when State forces searched for their father because of his support for rebel forces.
The Tribunal rejected their appeals after finding that political changes in the DRC meant their father’s past activity no longer created a well-founded fear of persecution. The sisters did not challenge that finding in these proceedings. Their judicial review applications concerned a separate claim, raised by their lawyer at the Tribunal hearing, that women in the DRC faced precarious conditions, including endemic rape and inadequate protection by State authorities.
The judge said the Tribunal’s decision referred to improving political conditions and the possible risk of generalised violence, but he found it difficult to identify a clear, reasoned response to the gender-based violence claim. He noted that the claim had not been raised at first instance or included in the notice of appeal, and that the sisters’ evidence appeared focused on past harm connected to their father. Any expressed fear of rape appeared to relate to his activities rather than the general treatment of women or the State’s failure to protect them.
The judge stressed that the applications were only at the leave stage and that he was not reaching firm conclusions on the merits. He ruled that substantial grounds had been shown to support judicial review, reasoning that a failure to give a clear and reasoned decision on each claim, if established, could invalidate the Tribunal’s decisions.
The court granted both sisters leave to seek judicial review on specified reliefs and grounds pleaded in E.R.’s case. The judgment does not determine the ultimate outcome of the judicial review or the sisters’ asylum claims.