The High Court has refused an applicant leave to challenge a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision that upheld a negative recommendation on her asylum claim. The court was considering only whether the proposed grounds were “substantial” under section 5 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000; it did not conduct a fresh determination of the asylum claim.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as E.E., was trafficked to Ireland from Nigeria at 16 by a woman she called “Christy” or “Christina”. After arriving in late 2006, she was found by gardaí in a Sligo house suspected of being used as a brothel and was placed in a Dublin hostel by the HSE. The judgment also records that she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS after arriving in Ireland.
The Tribunal had concluded that she was unlikely to face persecution or harm if returned to Nigeria. It considered that she was unlikely to be pursued by the alleged trafficker, that Nigerian authorities could protect her if needed, and that discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS would not amount to persecution in her circumstances.
The applicant argued that the Tribunal had selectively relied on country of origin information, citing passages about trafficking-related reprisals, official corruption, HIV stigma and barriers to treatment. The High Court said its role was to assess the legality and rationality of the Tribunal’s process, not to reweigh the country information or substitute its own assessment.
On HIV-related discrimination, the court found no substantial ground that the Tribunal’s account distorted the Canadian report before it. The report described stigma and discrimination, including problems in health care and the cost of antiretroviral drugs, but the court said it also supported the conclusion that discrimination was not systematic as part of official health-care policy.
On state protection and the risk of reprisals or re-trafficking, the court accepted that the materials showed trafficking remained a serious problem and that corruption and official connivance existed. It nevertheless found the Tribunal had rationally weighed those concerns against evidence of laws, agencies and victim-support services. The judgment also noted that the applicant had left Nigeria voluntarily after being deceived, had not been harmed there by the trafficker, and would return as an adult with her mother’s support available.
The court said the Tribunal was not required in these circumstances to consider a separate claim that return itself would be traumatic: that case had not been made, and the judgment identified no factor requiring the Tribunal to raise it. It concluded that no sustainable case had been shown that the Tribunal’s use of country information was unlawful. Leave was refused; the court did not quash the Tribunal’s decision.