Court of Appeal dismisses asylum appeals from domestic workers trafficked to the UK

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeals of two women who worked as domestic workers and were trafficked to the UK from the Philippines via Saudi Arabia. The appellants were arguing that they were refugees because of the risk that they would be re-trafficked if returned to the Philippines. The case is EAV v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1677.

There were two appellants. In EAV’s case the Home Office had accepted that as a victim of trafficking, she was a member of a particular social group in the Philippines. However the particular social group point was not accepted by the Home Office in GMP’s case. The explanation from the Home Office for the discrepancy of positions was that a new Country Policy and Information Note had been published between the two decisions.

EAV had succeeded in her asylum appeal at the First-tier Tribunal. GMP had not, with the tribunal finding that she would not seek overseas employment again and put herself at risk of a repetition of the treatment that she had experienced. Both appellants were unsuccessful in the Upper Tribunal.

On the particular social group point, the Court of Appeal said that it was:

prepared to assume for the purposes of both appeals that both women belong to a particular social group, notwithstanding the absence of any clear evidence that former victims of trafficking, or females who are former victims of trafficking (other than for the purposes of sexual exploitation) are perceived in Philippines society as having a distinct identity.

The matter then turned to risk of re-trafficking on return. For GMP, the Court of Appeal said that the First-tier Tribunal was entitled to make the findings that it did and those findings were not tainted by any error of law.

In EAV’s case, the Court found that the reason for the risk of persecutory treatment was not connected to her membership of a particular social group:

59. The important point is that what drives the individual’s behaviour in the present case is economic pressure, rather than her membership of a particular social group. EAV’s status as a former victim of trafficking is not a reason why she is at risk of being exploited were she to seek to work abroad again. She was economically vulnerable before she was trafficked and remained economically vulnerable afterwards. There was no evidence, and more pertinently no finding by the FtT, that she was any more vulnerable to exploitation than any other impoverished female in the Philippines because she had been exploited in the past.

Even though it refers to the facts of this specific case, the above paragraph will make it more difficult to succeed in these cases now (it was already far from straightforward). In addition to trying to address this causal link point, practitioners will need to deal with the particular social group point very carefully in these cases, given the Home Office’s change of position in the Country Policy and Information Note and the court declining to make a finding on the point here.

More importantly, is the government ever going to take action that will actually help domestic workers who have been trafficked to the UK? The current position, that they are entitled to a two year non-renewable grant of leave that does not lead to settlement, means that it will make sense for many people in this position to try to put forward an asylum claim instead. They should be given a better option.