The High Court has dismissed a Zimbabwean woman’s challenge to a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting her asylum claim, finding no duty in the circumstances to investigate the authenticity of documents she submitted in support of her account.
The judicial review concerned a tribunal decision dated 3 May 2016. The applicant, identified in the judgment as T.T. (Zimbabwe), said she supported the Movement for Democratic Change and that she and family members had been persecuted by Zanu-PF. She travelled to Malawi in June 2007 and came to Ireland in July 2007, but applied for asylum in December 2013. The Refugee Applications Commissioner rejected her claim in July 2014, and the tribunal dismissed her appeal after a hearing in December 2015.
Justice Richard Humphreys said the tribunal had grounds to question her credibility beyond the documents. These included her limited knowledge of the party and its leaders, an account concerning a sister that was not mentioned in her questionnaire, the delay in seeking asylum, and inconsistencies in her evidence. He also found the submitted documents conflicted with her account as to time and place. Even if genuine, he said, they undermined her credibility.
The applicant’s counsel argued that the tribunal should have investigated whether the documents were authentic. The judgment considered the European Court of Human Rights decision in Singh v Belgium, where authorities had not checked documents from the UN refugee agency that could have been readily verified and were central to the applicants’ protection claims. Justice Humphreys said that case arose in a different context: the documents were highly probative and easily checked, while the documents in this case came from entities in the country of origin and were not readily verifiable.
The judge also noted that the applicant had not assisted with verification and that the tribunal’s credibility assessment was lawful independently of the documents. He said the European Convention on Human Rights issue discussed in Singh concerned removal and the risk of prohibited treatment; a refusal of protection alone did not trigger that issue in Ireland before a deportation decision.
The court rejected the judicial review and dismissed the application. It did not set aside the tribunal’s decision or order a new assessment.