The High Court quashed a decision refusing a Romanian man’s refugee appeal after finding that the Refugee Appeals Tribunal failed to consider 19 documents submitted in support of his claim. The matter was remitted to the Tribunal for determination by another member in accordance with law.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan on 30 July 2007, concerned the Tribunal’s decision of 27 February 2004, which affirmed a recommendation that the applicant should not be declared a refugee. The court also quashed the Tribunal member’s underlying decision of 20 February 2004.
The applicant and his wife had applied for refugee status in April 2003. Their applications included a detailed written account and 29 documents, all in Romanian. Ten documents were translated before the Refugee Applications Commissioner issued a negative recommendation in January 2004. The other 19 were not translated.
The applicant’s solicitors identified all 29 documents in the appeal and submitted that the appeal could not be properly considered until they had been translated. The Tribunal decided the appeal without translations of the 19 documents and without further contact with the applicant or his solicitors about them. It was common ground that the member did not consider the contents of those documents; the member had only their descriptions in a translated list.
The court held that the statutory duty to consider documents did not require a Tribunal member to examine every document in every case. But here, the 29 documents had been specifically listed, the applicant had asserted their relevance in both his application and appeal, and no inquiries had been made to establish why they mattered. In those circumstances, ignoring the 19 documents breached the statutory requirements and the applicant’s right to fair procedures.
The court rejected the respondents’ submission that the applicant first had to prove the documents’ relevance in the judicial review proceedings. It said the Commissioner or Tribunal could have made inquiries about their relevance, including through further inquiries requested from the Commissioner during the appeal process. The ruling did not decide whether the applicant qualified for refugee status. It addressed the procedure used to determine his appeal.
The same issues arose in proceedings brought by the applicant’s wife, and the parties agreed that the court’s decision would determine her case as well. Her name is redacted in the judgment.