Case summaries

The case concerned an appeal against a refusal to grant refugee status on the grounds that the applicant lacked credibility as the country of origin information (COI) submitted by the applicant was not verified by the national documentation service providing COI. 

The applicant’s refugee status was revoked due to a change in circumstances in the applicant’s country of origin as per section 107 subsection 5 of the Aliens’ Act, where the applicant’s individual need of protection was assessed in light of the notable and established social change in Sudan.

The House of Lords test in Januzi (see separate summary) for assessing internal protection was approved.  In assessing whether the proposed area of internal relocation was unreasonable or unduly harsh it was an error of law to require that the circumstances would result in a breach of Art 3 of the ECHR or that the circumstances will be worse than the circumstances experienced by anyone else in that country.

In assessing whether an applicant could obtain internal protection to avoid persecution, decision makers should consider whether it would be unreasonable or unduly harsh to expect the applicant to relocate to another part of their country. Decision makers should not make the assessment by comparing the conditions in the area of internal relocation to international human rights law standards or the conditions in the country of refuge. Rather, the starting point should be the guidance contained in the UNHCR Guidelines on International Protection (July 2003). Where the persecution emanated from the state all relevant factors had to be considered. It could not be said that there was no option of an internal relocation alternative on the basis of the presumption that the state can act throughout its territory.

The House of Lords considered whether refusal or deprivation of state support to destitute asylum applicants, who were by law prohibited from working, was sufficiently severe as to engage Art 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Austrian authorities must, in each case, examine whether there exists a real risk of a violation of Art 3 ECHR through indirect refoulement when expelling an asylum applicant and, if such a risk exists, the authorities should exercise the sovereignty clause in the Dublin Regulation. This applies even where a request to take back is made to another Member State of the Dublin Regulation. Although the Asylum Board's reasoning for refusing the applicant's appeal against a transfer to Slovakia was not very detailed, it was not arbitrary and therefore there was no violation of the applicant's Constitutional rights.