The High Court has refused an application by a Zimbabwean mother and her daughter to quash a decision refusing their international protection appeal, while granting an unopposed extension of time to bring the challenge.
In a decision delivered on 5 July 2022, Ms Justice Bolger held that the International Protection Appeals Tribunal was entitled to find that the mother had not established her general credibility and to decline to apply the benefit of the doubt to aspects of the claim that remained uncertain.
The mother said she feared that, if returned to Zimbabwe, her former boyfriend, identified in the judgment as VM, would arrange a marriage for their daughter and physically abuse her again. She said VM was connected to Zanu-PF, Zimbabwe’s ruling party. The mother and daughter arrived in Ireland on 17 March 2018 and applied for international protection three days later.
The Tribunal accepted, on the balance of probabilities, that the mother had suffered physical violence from VM on two occasions before the daughter’s birth. It found the claim about a proposed arranged marriage was not contrary to country-of-origin information, but identified inconsistencies in the mother’s account, including about VM’s contact with the daughter and how he communicated the alleged marriage plan. It also found her account of his Zanu-PF connections vague and lacking detail.
The Tribunal concluded that the account did not establish a sufficient threat of persecution. It considered the passage of time since the assaults and the mother’s independent life away from VM to be reasons the persecution was unlikely to recur. It found the applicants’ fears were not objectively justified and did not establish a reasonable chance of persecution or serious harm on return.
The applicants challenged the Tribunal’s use of section 28(7) of the International Protection Act 2015, arguing that it was not a measure of general credibility. The respondents said the Tribunal had conducted a fair assessment and properly applied the section.
Justice Bolger followed the approach in an earlier High Court decision, AH and others v IPAT, which she said both sides accepted was relevant to the law. She held that general credibility must be established before undocumented aspects of a claim can receive the benefit of the doubt, subject to the other statutory conditions. She rejected the argument that the earlier decision should be distinguished and refused the substantive application.
The judge’s indicative view was that the respondents should receive their costs because the applicants had not succeeded. She listed the case for mention on 21 July 2022 to hear further submissions on costs and final orders. The judgment did not make those final orders at that stage.