The High Court has quashed a 2009 Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee status to an anonymised Chinese couple and ordered a fresh determination that considers the country information submitted on their behalf.
In a judgment delivered on 1 October 2014, Mr Justice Barr found that the tribunal had considered only one item of country of origin information, a 2002 UK Home Office report about Fujian province. The court said the remaining material had been ignored. It directed that the case return to the tribunal, which must reconsider the claims in light of all the country information submitted.
The couple said they had two children in China without official permission under its family planning rules. The wife told the court she had been forcibly sterilised in 1999 and that officials later sought to sterilise her husband. They said they feared forced sterilisation, fines, loss of employment and discrimination in access to medical and educational benefits if returned.
The judge said it was arguable that people who had more than one child in China without permission could form a particular social group for refugee law purposes. That was not a final finding that the couple were refugees or that they would face persecution. The tribunal must reconsider whether their fear of persecution is linked to membership of such a group.
The tribunal had also made adverse credibility findings, including over the couple’s knowledge of the unpaid balance of fines, details of their journey to Ireland and the wife’s account of an asylum application form completed in the UK. The High Court held that the tribunal was entitled to make those findings, but concluded they concerned peripheral aspects of the account. It accepted that the central account of the children’s births and the wife’s sterilisation had been supported by case-specific documents.
The couple had entered Ireland in April 2000 and applied for asylum in 2005. The tribunal refused their appeals in decisions dated 27 January 2009. The High Court’s order quashed those decisions and required a fresh tribunal determination; it did not grant refugee status.