The Supreme Court yesterday handed down judgment in TN, MA and AA (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] UKSC 40, in which the Court held that a breach of the family tracing duty in Regulation 6 of the Asylum Seekers (Reception Conditions) Regulations 2005 does not...
There have been some significant recent developments in the Dublin system, which is the means by which people who enter the United Kingdom and claim asylum are returned to the first EU country they have passed through. A child of five with a map could tell you that the system...
The House of Commons Library has issued an interesting briefing on the UK approach to Syrian refugees. Hat tip to ILPA for spotting it. The UK has taken in 4,000 Syrian refugees who managed to reach our shores to make a personal direct claim for asylum despite our best efforts...
The key reason why women are refused asylum in Europe is because they are not believed. So let’s imagine a woman comes to the UK to seek protection from human rights abuses. Let’s call her Malaika. Chances are that Malaika will have experienced some form of sexual violence before she...
The Administrative Court last week (22.5.15) handed down judgment in the case of R (on the application of AB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 1490 (Admin), quashing a decision not to recognize AB as a victim of human trafficking for the purposes of the Council...
The treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans asylum seekers has been notoriously poor for many years. In 2010, my organisation, the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, exposed that 98-99% of gay and lesbian asylum seekers had been refused asylum and told to go back, often to violently homophobic...
Anyone working with child asylum seekers — lawyers, civil servants, judges — should read UNHCR’s new publication The Heart of the Matter: Assessing Credibility when Children Apply for Asylum in the European Union. It came out a couple of weeks ago but looking for it just now to update the...
James Brokenshire, until the dissolution of Parliament last week the Minister of Immigration [EDIT: I am reliably informed that he is still the Minister – thanks go to Alison Harvey!], has confirmed that the recent tightening of policy on granting British citizenship was not aimed at refugees. The change of...
The image above is of a Californian doctor sobbing outside the hospital building having lost the 19 year old patient on whom he was operating. It has gone viral on social media. It was also picked up in The Guardian in an interesting article by Deborah Orr: The image of...
A successful judicial review claim by a trafficking victim is reported at R (on the application of FM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 844 (Admin) (26 March 2015). Philip Mott QC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge found that the Home Office had unlawfully...
Back in July 2014 I picked through the official Home Office quarterly statistics to plot the refusal rate for visa applications by Syrians to travel to the UK since 2010. There are many Syrians with family or other links to the UK who, perhaps despite or perhaps because of the...
In Blakesley v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] EWCA Civ 141 the Court of Appeal considered whether the UK Government is in breach of its international obligations towards refugees because of the lack of any provision to make back-payments of welfare benefits to those asylum seekers who,...
The Supreme Court last week rejected the Home Office’s attempt to keep Jamaica on the list of safe countries for asylum claims despite an estimated 10% of the population in Jamaica being subject to persecution because they are gay. This blow to the Home Office came the same week that...
The circumstances in which an asylum claim may be treated as abandoned by an applicant have been extended with effect from 27 February 2015. Statement of Changes HC 1025 has inserted new wording into paragraph 333C of the Immigration Rules so that it provides: An application may be treated as...
MM (Darfuris) Sudan (CG) [2015] UKUT 10 (IAC) is a commendably concise and to the point new Country Guidance case on Sudan and Darfuris: In the country guidance case of AA (Non-Arab Darfuris-relocation) Sudan CG [2009] UKAIT 00056, where it is stated that if a claimant from Sudan is a...
In an arguably less than ideal piece of timing the Upper Tribunal has finally, just two days before Christmas, issued the long awaited Country Guidance decision on asylum claims by Pakistani Christians. The case is AK and SK (Christians: risk) Pakistan CG [2014] UKUT 00569 (IAC) and the hearing actually...
Dear Jesus, You have applied for asylum in the United Kingdom and asked to be recognised as a refugee under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva Convention) on the basis that it would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Geneva Convention for you...
In welcome news for LGBT asylum claimants, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled this week that ‘tests’ to prove a claimant’s sexual orientation, or intimate questioning about sexual behaviour, may breach the rights to human dignity and respect for private life contained in Articles 1 and 7...
The Independent reported at the end of last week that an “expert” linguist at controversial commercial linguistic analysis company SPRAKAB has lied about his qualifications and has a criminal conviction for smuggling drugs. It is rather questionable whether the “expert” testimony of such a person should be regarded as inherently...
In Tarakhel v Switzerland [2014] ECHR 1185 (04 November 2014) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) has issued its long-awaited decision as to the lawfulness of returning asylum seekers to Italy, a subject that has engaged the refugee lawyers of Europe for some years. The ECtHR rules that individualised enquiries...
Long-awaited guidance on returns to Mogadishu poses significant, but not insurmountable, challenges to appellants It may be 286 pages long but the apparent effect of the new Somalia Country Guidance — MOJ & Ors (Return to Mogadishu) (CG) [2014] UKUT 442 (IAC) — can, from the Home Office’s perspective, be...
Want to know who might qualify as a refugee? What the legal requirements are? What reasons the Home Office relies on to refuse cases and what counter arguments are available? Who might be excluded from refugee status? I have just finished a new ebook, this time on refugee law in...
When reviewing the Home Office’s new Appeals Guidance policy document I was reminded of a new feature of the appeals regime that is an important one but which was tucked away in the schedules to the Immigration Act 2014. A new expanded section 120 of the 2002 Act is introduced...
Today the Home Office has belatedly allowed publication of an investigation by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, John Vine, into the assessment of asylum claims based on sexual identity. The report was handed to Theresa May on 31 July 2014 and it is today published alongside a document...
The official headnote is quite long but you can get the gist from paragraph 2: There is significant evidence of human rights abuses, including within Cabinda and affecting Cabindans, problems of arbitrary arrest and detention, ill-treatment in detention, poor prison conditions, restrictions on freedom of expression, government action against protest...
It tickles me that UKIP plan to scrap the EU agreement that permits the UK to return asylum seekers to other EU countries without considering their asylum claim. As it stands, this EU agreement, often referred to as the Dublin Convention or Dublin Regulation (not Treaty as UKIP seem to...
The Court of Appeal yesterday gave judgment in Tabrizagh and others, the application for permission to appeal from the decision of Laing J. The written judgment is not available yet but will be soon [UPDATE: R (On the Application Of Tabrizagh & Ors) v The Secretary of State for the...
Anxious scrutiny has been given the expert report from [name of expert]. It is noted that the report was produced for your solicitor “under her instruction” to aid your asylum claim. It is therefore not objective information and it is clear you were not subject to the cross examination that...
Kent Law Clinic has published a new report, How Children Become Failed Asylum Seekers, which needs to be read by anyone representing children in asylum cases. Taking the files of 25 “failed asylum seekers” who had arrived in Kent as children, they reviewed the decision making process of the Home...
The phased withdrawal of US forces has not led to a return to generalised sectarian conflict and indeed appears to have resulted in a significant annualised drop in the number of security incidents … the most likely development is that the levels of violence will either continue to reduce or...
A fascinating study of power play and relationships inside and outside the hearing room has been published as a working paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford: The culture of disbelief: an ethnographic approach to understanding an under-theorised concept in the UK asylum system by Jessica...
In an e-mail posting on a practitioners’ discussion group last week, a representative asked the group for details of a psychiatrist in order to prove that the detained client is gay. In follow-up e-mails, it was revealed that the enquiry was prompted by Counsel’s advice, and that the author meant...
Asylum Aid has published a new report, Even If… The use of the Internal Protection Alternative in asylum decisions in the UK, analysing the reasoning on internal protection or internal relocation in Home Office asylum decisions, identifying a number of failings appearing frequently in the decisions read for the research....
Nearly 3 years after the end of the civil war in Libya that swept away the Qadhafi regime and its associated country guidance, and after nearly 8 months of deliberation, the Upper Tribunal has decided that Libya isn’t so bad after all, at least for men. The determination of AT...
In MF (Albania) v SSHD [2014] EWCA Civ 902, the Court of Appeal considered and upheld the criticisms of the appellant’s country expert made by the Upper Tribunal. In doing so, the Court appeared to disapprove of the practice of instructing expert witnesses to comment on particular findings made by...
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons report on an unannounced inspection of Dover Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) between 3–14 March 2014 (published 7 July 2014) once again highlights critical concerns surrounding Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules 2001. Dover IRC is generally commended, although its atmosphere appears to remain that...
