The High Court has set aside an International Protection Appeals Tribunal determination recommending that a Nigerian family receive neither refugee status nor subsidiary protection, and sent the appeals back to the tribunal for rehearing.
In a judgment delivered on 23 November 2022, Mr Justice Alexander Owens found that the tribunal failed to give adequate reasons for rejecting a solicitor’s letter and a police report concerning a complaint made by the first applicant’s brother in Nigeria. The court held that the tribunal did not properly consider whether the documents supported the applicant’s evidence that her brother had made a police complaint before the family left Nigeria.
The applicants are a married couple and their two minor daughters, identified in the judgment as BBA, OAA, TBA and EAA. They arrived in Ireland from Nigeria on tourist visas in February 2019 and sought international protection. They alleged that relatives in Kogi State threatened the family and would force female genital mutilation (FGM) on the daughters if they returned.
The tribunal had rejected their account as unreliable and contradictory. It found the alleged threats by members of the Offin clan not credible, and concluded that the daughters would not be at risk of FGM if they returned to Lagos. It also treated the police documents as suspect and considered their contents inconsistent with the applicants’ evidence.
The High Court said the solicitor’s letter was dated 19 November 2018, before the family travelled to Ireland. There was no evidence that the parents had prompted the brother to make a complaint after their arrival, as the tribunal had reasoned. The court held that, if accepted as authentic, the documents could support the narrower proposition that the brother had made a complaint to police before the family left Nigeria. They could not establish unadvanced claims about conversations with clan members or prove the truth of statements allegedly made to police.
The court also addressed a medical report submitted after the tribunal hearing. It recorded a Lagos hospital registration date when BBA was in Ireland. The judge said the tribunal was entitled to reject it after identifying that unexplained discrepancy. The report added nothing to BBA’s evidence that she had undergone FGM as a child, which was not disputed before the tribunal.
The court found the errors concerning the solicitor’s letter and police report serious enough to set aside the determination. It did not decide the family’s protection claims or express a final view on the remaining grounds. Those appeals are to be reheard by the tribunal.