The High Court has refused a Georgian woman’s application for judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting her asylum appeal, finding no legal error in the tribunal’s reliance on country of origin information or its credibility assessment.
The case concerned the tribunal’s decision of 2 November 2007. The woman had been granted leave to seek judicial review on two grounds: that the country information did not address her personal circumstances and alleged risk, and that reliance on it affected the assessment of her credibility.
She said she feared mistreatment in Georgia because she was Georgian and married to an Ossetian man, and because the couple had lived in South Ossetia for 15 years. She also said her husband had been regarded as a traitor in Georgia after refusing to serve in the Georgian army in South Ossetia. Her account included alleged attacks on the family, the burning of her husband’s garage, and two kidnappings of her husband in South Ossetia, followed by ransom demands. These were claims described in the judgment, not findings made by the High Court.
The tribunal had relied on a UK Home Office guidance note stating that Georgia generally respected ethnic minorities’ rights and that there was no evidence of persecution by state or non-state agents on account of regional origins, minority ethnicity or an imputed association with separatist authorities. The tribunal concluded that state protection would be available in Tbilisi and found the woman’s evidence neither plausible nor credible where it conflicted with the country information. It also cited concerns about her lack of identification documents and her explanation of how she travelled to Ireland.
The woman argued that the material did not address her distinct circumstances as a Georgian woman associated with South Ossetia through her marriage and years living there. The court rejected that argument. It said the country information was relevant to the feared risk arising from that association and provided a basis for the tribunal’s conclusion. The court also considered it unlikely that authoritative country information would cover the specific allegation about her husband’s refusal to serve, and noted that she could have relied on analogous reports of mistreatment.
The court concluded that reliance on the guidance note did not vitiate the credibility assessment and that the tribunal had made no error. It therefore refused the judicial review application. The judgment did not grant the requested order of certiorari; the tribunal’s decision remained in place.