The High Court has quashed an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee status to a Zimbabwean woman and her three children, finding that the tribunal did not adequately explain its assessment of her credibility. The court remitted their appeal to the tribunal for a fresh determination.
The judicial review concerned a tribunal decision dated 14 July 2016, which had affirmed a recommendation that the applicants not be declared refugees. The woman said she feared persecution in Zimbabwe because of her mother’s perceived opposition to the ruling party. She said she was raped there in 2002, when she was 15, and later fled to South Africa. The judgment records that her three children were dependent applicants.
The tribunal accepted that the woman had been raped, fled Zimbabwe, lived in South Africa and made two work trips to Harare in 2013 and 2014. It nevertheless found that the trips undermined her claimed fear of return. It also rejected her claim that an attack on her flatmate in South Africa in 2014 had been intended for her.
The High Court did not decide whether the woman’s account was true or whether the applicants qualified for refugee status. It reviewed the legality and reasoning of the tribunal’s decision. Justice David Keane found that the tribunal accepted some unsupported parts of her account while rejecting others without identifying a clear overall approach to credibility or giving reasons that the applicants and the reviewing court could understand.
The judge said the tribunal had not addressed the requirements for accepting unsupported statements under the applicable 2006 protection regulations. The decision also did not adequately explain its treatment of the woman’s account of what her attackers said during the rape, her explanation for returning to Zimbabwe on work trips, or her account of the attack on her flatmate. The court held that the credibility analysis was insufficiently reasoned and that the decision also failed the test of rationality or reasonableness.
The applicants had also argued that the tribunal mishandled the regulations’ provision concerning past persecution and failed to properly consider country-of-origin information. The judge did not decide those arguments, finding it unnecessary to do so.
The court granted certiorari, quashing the 2016 tribunal decision, and sent the applicants’ appeal back to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal for a fresh determination. It made no finding on the merits of their protection claims.