The High Court has quashed a 2011 decision refusing subsidiary protection to a man from Cameroon and directed the Minister for Justice and Equality to reconsider his application in line with the court’s judgment.
In a judgment delivered on 15 February 2016, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys granted leave for judicial review under the applicant’s latest amended statement of grounds and ordered certiorari of the refusal. The case was adjourned to allow the parties to consider any consequential applications, with advance notice to the other party required.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as W.T., was born in Cameroon in 1992. He said he had faced threats from family members after being reluctant to accept a traditional leadership role connected to tribal succession. He arrived in Ireland as an unaccompanied minor in October 2009. His asylum application was refused by the Refugee Applications Commissioner and, on appeal, by the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, which considered that he could relocate within Cameroon.
The Minister refused subsidiary protection on 30 November 2011 and made a deportation order. That order was revoked in July 2013 after the applicant acquired permission to remain as a family member of a recognised refugee. The court rejected the Minister’s submission that this later status meant the judicial review served no useful purpose. It found that subsidiary protection could give the applicant individual rights and potential rights for his own family, among other possible advantages.
The judgment examined the 2006 regulations governing subsidiary protection and their relationship with the EU Qualification Directive. The court said the regulations’ definitions of “actors of persecution or serious harm” and “protection against persecution or serious harm” were ineffective because they were not used in substantive provisions. It held, however, that the regulations required relevant terms to be interpreted consistently with the directive.
The court did not find that the Minister’s assessment of Cameroon’s legal system was irrational, and it rejected several other challenges, including complaints about notice of country information. But the Minister had taken considerable account of protection available from national non-governmental organisations. The court held that such organisations did not qualify as actors of protection under the directive absent evidence that the state was responsible for the framework in which they operated. Their inclusion showed a misunderstanding of the test.
Because the state-protection assessment was intertwined with the finding that the applicant faced no serious harm, the court could not sever that flaw from the decision. It therefore quashed the refusal and ordered a fresh decision. The judgment did not grant subsidiary protection; it required the Minister to reconsider the application.