The High Court has refused an Albanian couple’s challenge to an international protection decision, finding that the appeals tribunal had lawfully concluded that adequate state protection would be available if they were returned to Albania.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter also granted the couple an extension of time to bring the judicial review. Their challenge was lodged about five weeks after the statutory deadline. The judge accepted their solicitor’s explanation that Covid-19 restrictions and difficulties taking instructions and consulting counsel remotely had caused the delay. He also considered the prejudice the applicants would face if denied the opportunity to argue their case.
The couple sought to quash parts of a November 2020 decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), which affirmed the recommendation that they receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection. They also sought a fresh appeal hearing before a different tribunal member.
IPAT had accepted substantial parts of their account. The first applicant said she had been forced at 16 to become engaged to an older man and was subjected to violence by her father and brother when she tried to end that engagement. The tribunal accepted her evidence of a suicide attempt in 2011, later threats from the man and harassment by his nephews. It also accepted that the second applicant was attacked in 2016 and that the couple received an anonymous death threat while in Italy.
The tribunal found that the couple faced a well-founded fear of persecution by the man and the first applicant’s family, and that the feared harm would amount to persecution. It nevertheless concluded that Albania could provide adequate state protection. The couple argued in the High Court that the tribunal had not adequately explained how it reached that conclusion from country information that described shortcomings in Albanian policing. They also said it had failed to properly weigh material within a report focused on blood feuds.
The judge held that IPAT was entitled to prefer the Cedoca report because it dealt specifically with blood feuds and met relevant standards for country-of-origin information. Read as a whole, he said, the report supported the tribunal’s view that Albania operated an effective system for addressing blood-feud-related crime. Other cited material, including a UK Home Office report, also supported the tribunal’s conclusion. The court’s role on judicial review was not to substitute its own assessment of the country information for the tribunal’s.
The applicants had not reported their difficulties to Albanian police. The judge read IPAT’s reference to this as noting the absence of evidence about how police would have responded, rather than holding the lack of reports against the couple.
The court refused the relief sought. The extension of time allowed the review to proceed, but the challenge to IPAT’s decision did not succeed.