The High Court has quashed an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision refusing protection to an anonymised Nigerian woman, ruling that the tribunal failed to assess her claim of future persecution by family members separately from her claim about traffickers.
In a judgment delivered on 18 February 2020, Mr Justice Max Barrett ordered that the case be returned to the tribunal for fresh consideration. The court did not decide whether the woman would face persecution if returned to Nigeria, or direct the tribunal to reach a particular outcome.
The woman, identified in the judgment as Ms I, challenged the tribunal’s 2 April 2019 refusal of her application. She had claimed she feared her family because she had worked as a prostitute in Nigeria, including when she was a minor, and also feared traffickers who she said had brought her to Ireland. The tribunal accepted that she had worked as a prostitute and had been disowned by her family, but did not accept that she had been attacked or targeted by them. It rejected her claim that she had been trafficked to Ireland.
The court said the tribunal’s assessment of future risk focused on information about women returned to Nigeria after trafficking. It did not properly examine country information submitted about risks from family or other domestic actors, despite accepting that the woman had raised a distinct fear concerning her family.
The respondents argued that the accepted facts did not require a separate assessment of risk from her extended family. The judge rejected that position. He said that once the tribunal accepted that she had worked as a prostitute and that her family had disapproved of her, it was required to investigate the specific claim she had made about future family harm.
The court also found the tribunal had not given a valid reason for preferring some country information over other material. It criticised reasoning that the woman might be better able to resettle because she had previously supported herself through prostitution, describing that rationale as inconsistent with human dignity and without legal weight.
The judgment records that the respondents’ point about the timing of the judicial review was not pursued. The court said it would in any event have granted the extension sought. Its order was to quash the tribunal decision and return the matter for a fresh assessment.