The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision in part after finding that it did not expressly determine the asylum claim of a daughter whose case was considered alongside her mother’s. The court rejected the mother’s challenge to the decision concerning her own claim.
In a judgment delivered on 5 May 2011, Mr Justice Cooke said the Tribunal’s 31 July 2008 decision and the earlier report by the Refugee Applications Commissioner contained no explicit conclusion or explanation about the daughter’s claim. The Commissioner’s report referred to her as a dependent applicant but otherwise dealt with the mother’s account. The Tribunal decision referred to the daughter but its substantive analysis addressed the mother’s claims.
The respondents argued that no specific claim had been made for the daughter. The court accepted that there was force in this argument, noting there was no account of past persecution of the daughter in Ivory Coast or a particular fear of persecution unique to her. However, it held that where two asylum applicants were dealt with together, the Tribunal had to state, even briefly, why each person’s claim was rejected. It was not enough to leave the Minister to infer that no separate claim had been advanced.
The court said the daughter had been born in Ivory Coast and had never been to Liberia. It noted the possibility that she might be repatriated to a different country from her mother. Whether Ivory Coast was safe for repatriation would be considered in any subsidiary protection application or deportation process, the judgment said; that question was not decided in this judicial review.
The mother’s challenge concerned her claimed fear of persecution if returned to Liberia, including her account of being raped while fleeing there during the civil war, and whether her past harm supplied compelling reasons for protection under Regulation 5(2). The Tribunal had concluded that conditions in Liberia had changed, that she was in contact with family connections there, and that she no longer faced a real risk of those events being repeated.
The court found the mother’s claim had been properly considered. It said no compelling reason had been put forward for protection based on the past rape alone. A medical report described continuing symptoms linked to traumatic experiences in both Liberia and Ivory Coast, but the court found it did not identify a continuing consequence of the rape that amounted to such a reason.
The court refused judicial review concerning the mother and quashed the Tribunal decision only insofar as it related to the daughter’s asylum application.