The High Court has refused a child’s application for judicial review of a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing her refugee status, finding no legal error in the tribunal’s assessment of her nationality and credibility.
In a judgment delivered on 14 April 2015, Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh said the tribunal was entitled to rely on a conflict between the child’s birth certificate and her mother’s account of how it was registered. The court ruled that, having lawfully found the child’s nationality had not been established, the tribunal was not required to assess whether she faced persecution in Zimbabwe.
The child, identified in the proceedings as N. M., was described as a minor who pursued her asylum claim through her mother and next friend, N. N. She claimed to be Zimbabwean and said she had been beaten by a neighbour because her father was a member of the opposition MDC, while supporters of Zanu PF targeted children associated with the party. She also said she stopped attending school and that her mother could not seek police protection. These were claims before the court, not findings made in the judicial review judgment.
The tribunal’s decision, made on 16 March 2011, found that the child had not established her claimed nationality. The respondent’s counsel argued that the tribunal’s credibility assessment centred on the birth certificate, which recorded the mother as the person who registered the birth in Zimbabwe on 13 August 2010. The mother had been in Ireland since April 2009, the judgment records. The judge said the tribunal had put this conflict to the mother at the hearing and was entitled to find her answer unsatisfactory and doubt the document’s authenticity.
The applicant also argued that the nationality finding denied her an effective remedy and that the tribunal had failed to assess her individual circumstances as a child. The judge rejected those arguments. He said the case differed from a separate asylum re-entry process considered in an earlier judgment: here, the asylum system included a two-tier decision process and judicial review. He also noted that the birth certificate issue had been raised before the Refugee Applications Commissioner and on appeal to the tribunal, which had power to reverse the negative findings.
The court refused the judicial review application. The judgment quashed no decision, substituted no finding on refugee status and made no order granting the child protection. It addressed the legality of the tribunal’s decision-making, not the merits of the child’s underlying persecution claims.