The High Court has quashed an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee or subsidiary protection to a Pakistani woman and her two daughters, after finding deficiencies in how the tribunal assessed her claim that they could face harm in Pakistan.
In a judgment delivered on 17 July 2019, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the tribunal’s reasons for rejecting the risk claim did not adequately address the woman’s circumstances as the mother of two children born outside marriage in Ireland. The woman, anonymised as Ms Y, said she feared she and her daughters would be treated as outcasts if returned to Pakistan.
The tribunal had relied in part on the absence of past persecution in Pakistan. The judge said this did not make sense in relation to the children, who were born in Ireland and therefore had not been present during Ms Y’s earlier time in Pakistan.
The court also said the tribunal’s assertion that Ms Y feared no state or community actors was not borne out by her interview evidence. She had said she feared her father, brother and society, and that she could not seek help from Pakistani authorities because her family might find out and the authorities would do nothing. The judgment noted that her application also referred to possible educational deprivation for the children, though it was unclear whether this would result from state action or social discrimination.
The judge said the tribunal’s third stated reason for rejecting the claim was a conclusion rather than an independent reason. Because the first two reasons were deficient on this aspect of the claim, the third could not stand.
However, the court rejected Ms Y’s separate argument that the tribunal had failed to identify or analyse her claim because it described her as a “single mother”. The judge said she had herself advanced risk based in part on that status, and the tribunal understood that the underlying issue was non-compliance with the Pakistani social norm of having children within marriage.
The court answered “no” to whether the tribunal had failed adequately to identify or analyse that core element. It said a second question about whether that supposed failure had distorted the risk assessment depended on a “yes” answer to the first, so the premise did not arise.
Despite those answers, the court granted the limited order of certiorari sought by Ms Y’s counsel, based on the deficiencies identified in the tribunal’s reasoning. The judgment does not grant her protection status; it quashes the challenged decision to the stated limited extent.