The High Court refused K. O. leave to challenge a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision upholding the recommendation that she should not be declared a refugee. The court found she had not shown substantial grounds for arguing that the decision should be quashed.
Mr Justice Hedigan also extended the time for bringing the proceedings. K. O. began them about six weeks after the 14-day statutory deadline, but the judge accepted that she had acted with all due expedition and found good and sufficient reason to extend time.
K. O., a Nigerian national, said her husband’s family had pressured her to convert from Christianity and take part in traditional rituals, and that her brothers-in-law had raped and mistreated her. She said her in-laws abducted her first daughter, K, when the child was one, and subjected her to female genital mutilation. K. O. did not know whether the child was still alive. She later fled to Kano with her second daughter, J, but returned to Lagos about nine months later. She said her in-laws took her son, M, circumcised him, and caused his death two weeks later. She left Nigeria for Ireland with J when she became pregnant again.
The tribunal accepted K. O.’s account of difficulties with her in-laws but rejected her appeal. It considered her return from Kano to Lagos inconsistent with a genuine subjective fear of persecution and found that information about Nigeria indicated state protection might reasonably have been available.
In the judicial review application, K. O. argued that the tribunal had failed to consider letters from Limerick Rape Crisis Centre and Limerick Social Services, misconstrued evidence about her return to Lagos, and inadequately assessed state protection. The respondents argued that the letters were not material because the rape was not disputed, that the return finding matched her earlier interview account, and that the country information supported the tribunal’s assessment.
The judge found no evidence that the tribunal had ignored the letters. He noted a difference between K. O.’s accounts of her return: at her earlier interview, she said her husband had asked her to come back and told her his family were looking for her; at the tribunal hearing, she said her in-laws had visited and threatened her in Kano. The judge held that it was open to the tribunal to find she had returned voluntarily.
On state protection, the judge said assessing the weight of country information was the tribunal’s function. Having read the UK Home Office report, he found no fault with the tribunal’s assessment and concluded its findings were consistent with the report as a whole. The High Court therefore refused leave; it did not quash the tribunal decision.