The High Court has refused a Togolese man’s application for judicial review of a decision upholding a negative recommendation on his asylum claim.
In a judgment delivered on 4 October 2012, Ms Justice M. Clark found no illegality in the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s assessment and refused the relief sought. The court’s decision concerned the lawfulness of the Tribunal’s determination; it did not itself decide a later application for subsidiary protection or humanitarian leave to remain.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as S. Y. (Togo), said he feared persecution because of his membership of the UFC opposition party. He described distributing leaflets, recruiting young people and helping organise a planned tyre-burning protest in Lomé. He also said he wrote an article critical of President Eyadema, which was published on a Togolese diaspora website in late 2003. He claimed authorities searched for him and that party leaders advised him to leave Togo for Ghana, then leave Ghana for Ireland.
The Refugee Applications Commissioner recommended against recognising him as a refugee in April 2005. The Tribunal upheld that recommendation on appeal, considering the claim on documents without an oral hearing. It accepted that the applicant was a Togolese national and a UFC member, but viewed his involvement as low profile and found insufficient objective evidence that someone in his stated position faced persecution. The Tribunal also questioned his account of the consequences of the article and protest plans, and his explanation for not seeking asylum in Ghana.
The judicial review grounds challenged, among other things, the Tribunal’s treatment of country information about internet censorship, its assessment of the alleged searches, and its conclusions about the applicant’s activism and time in Ghana. The court said the country reports described harassment of journalists and opposition figures, including restrictions on some websites around the 2003 election. But it found the material did not support the claim that a low-level activist who published the article described would likely be targeted. It also found the reports cited about Togolese refugees in Ghana did not establish the conditions there when the applicant said he was present in late 2003 and early 2004.
The judge concluded that the application failed because the evidence did not establish a well-founded fear of persecution and the Tribunal’s conclusions were not unlawful, unfair, irrational or unreasonable. The court refused the relief sought. The judgment noted that later changes in Togo might be relevant to possible future applications, but made no decision on those matters.