Case summaries
The Office of Immigration and Nationality (OIN) found the applicant not credible and therefore did not assess the risk of serious harm. Instead the OIN granted protection against refoulement. The Metropolitan Court ruled that the OIN was obliged to assess conditions for subsidiary protection and serious harm even if the applicant was not found credible.
Intimidation, loss of employment, humiliation, personal injury inflicted for reasons of sexual orientation and national legislation penalising homosexuals qualify as acts of persecution.
This case concerned a challenge to the Tribunal’s conduct of a asylum appeal hearing (alleged pre-judging of the case against the applicant due to an argument with the applicant’s lawyer) as well as the Tribunal’s reasoning (alleged flaws in credibility analysis and failure to share investigative burden with the applicant, as required by UNHCR handbook). The challenge was unsuccessful.
Internal protection has to be assessed in accordance with the Qualification Directive, and under very strict criteria. The possibility of relocating to another part of the country has to be available to the applicant and the protection has to be effective.
In countries where there is a high prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM), persons who have demonstrated that they oppose this practice have thus infringed the customary norms of their country of origin and therefore can be considered as having a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of membership of a particular social group in the meaning of Article 1A(2)of 1951 Refugee Convention.
A serious and individual threat to life and limb may result from a general risk in the context of an armed conflict if the risk is enhanced because of the applicant’s individual circumstances or from an extraordinary situation which is characterised by such a high degree of risk that practically any civilian would be exposed to a serious and individual threat simply by his or her presence in the affected region.
Homosexuals in Tunisia, even those that do not proclaim or overtly demonstrate their sexual orientation, can be considered as constituting a specific and sufficiently identifiable whole so as to form a group whose members would face a risk of persecution for reasons of common characteristics which define them in the eyes of the Tunisian authorities and society.
A woman having undergone female genital mutilation FGM, who benefitted from reconstructive surgery in France, an act considered as an infringement of Guinean customs despite its official ban, must be considered as a member of the social group formed by women who oppose female genital mutilation practiced in Guinea.
The requirement of an individualisation of the threat to the life or person of an applicant for subsidiary protection is inversely proportional to the degree of indiscriminate violence which characterises the armed conflict.