The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting a Nigerian woman’s asylum claim, finding that its assessment of internal relocation was unlawful and could not be separated from the rest of the decision.
In a judgment delivered on 30 May 2014, Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh said the tribunal had not shown that it properly considered whether the woman could reasonably be expected to stay in another part of Nigeria, having regard to her circumstances and conditions there.
The woman’s claim, as summarised by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, was that she was Christian, that her husband had converted from Islam, and that his family took their child and threatened her. She said she moved between parts of Nigeria to avoid them. The first-instance refusal cited a lack of credibility, including what it described as inconsistencies in her account of those movements and the fact that the family had not harmed her during the years before she left Nigeria.
The tribunal disbelieved parts of her account, including her explanation of how she passed through immigration controls and her account of living in Kaduna. But it did not clearly state whether it rejected her central claim about the child and her fear of her husband’s family. The judge said that, read as a whole, the decision suggested the core claim had been believed, or at least had not been clearly rejected.
The tribunal referred to Abuja and Port Harcourt during questioning about possible relocation. The judge accepted those places had been identified for consideration, although he said they should preferably have been stated in the operative part of the decision. The tribunal’s written reasons, however, did not show that it had assessed the risks in a proposed area or whether it was reasonable for the applicant to live there, taking account of her personal circumstances and the general conditions.
The judge said there were too many gaps to fill by guessing what the tribunal had considered. Because the credibility assessment did not clearly reject the central claim, the defective relocation finding could not be severed to preserve the refusal.
The court granted leave to seek judicial review and made final orders quashing the tribunal decision. It did not rule on the applicant’s request for a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union on the meaning of Article 8 of the Qualification Directive, saying that was no longer necessary.