The High Court has quashed part of an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision concerning a Nigerian applicant’s claim that past persecution gave compelling reasons for refugee status. It remitted the matter to the same tribunal member to complete the decision in accordance with the judgment.
The applicant, identified as P.A.F. (Nigeria), said his family home was attacked by Boko Haram on 16 September 2015. The judgment records that the tribunal accepted his account: his father was shot and later died from his injuries, and the applicant was held captive for about two months and subjected to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.
The Refugee Applications Commissioner rejected his asylum claim in 2016, but the tribunal later accepted his account. In September 2018, it rejected his appeals, finding that he could relocate within Nigeria. It also found no compelling reasons arising from past persecution that would make him eligible for refugee status. The judicial review challenged that part of the tribunal’s decision.
The High Court held that the applicant’s pending appeal was to be assessed under the earlier legal framework, which allowed compelling reasons arising from past persecution to be considered as a basis for refugee status. The judge did not decide whether the relevant 2006 regulations were valid, noting that the issue was historic after their revocation and was unlikely to affect many people in the applicant’s situation.
The tribunal had described compelling reasons as requiring a “very high threshold of atrocity” and relied on examples such as mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The High Court said those examples came from a different legal context and were not meant to define or exhaust the forms of persecution that could qualify. It also found the tribunal had placed undue emphasis on inhuman and degrading treatment, a concept tied to subsidiary protection, and had not properly considered relevant international and EU materials.
The judge said the proper question was whether the past persecution was atrocious enough to give rise to compelling reasons for refugee status, such that the applicant could not reasonably be expected to return despite regime change or an internal relocation option. He stressed that unreasonableness of return alone would not be sufficient: the applicant must also establish past atrocious persecution and compelling reasons arising from it.
The court quashed the tribunal’s decision only in relation to specified parts: paragraphs 8.2, 9.1, 12.3 and the first sentence of paragraph 12.4. The rest of the decision was not quashed by this order. The matter was remitted to the same tribunal member.