Author: S Chelvan

Picture of S Chelvan

S Chelvan

Dr. S. Chelvan is Head of Immigration and Public Law at 33 Bedford Row Chambers. Over the last 20 years, Chelvan has established a niche practice in protection and human rights claims. He is profiled in Band 1 in Legal 500 (2021) (Immigration, London Bar) - “His expertise in sexual-identity-related asylum claims is world-renowned”. Chelvan holds an LLM from Harvard Law School (2001, Kennedy Memorial Trust scholar), and was awarded a PhD in Law from King’s College London in June 2019 - his thesis was entitled: ‘At the End of the Rainbow: Where Next for the Queer Refugee?’. He tweets from @S_Chelvan.

On 14 December 2020, the Court of Appeal in YD (Algeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1683 dismissed the asylum and human rights appeal of a young gay man from Algeria. Facts of the case YD had arrived in the UK aged 15, having...

17th December 2020
BY S Chelvan

On a warm summer’s day in late July, five sets of appellant lawyers found themselves in Court 4 of the Upper Tribunal in Field House, huddled together on what could only be characterised as “the naughty step”. Unaware at the start of the day the rationale for the hearings before...

9th December 2019
BY S Chelvan

Recent statistics on asylum grants to gay people represent a breakthrough rather than a breakdown in the system – acting as a sword, rather than shield, in advancing protection of queer refugees, argues S Chelvan of No5 Barristers Chambers. Long-awaited experimental statistics on asylum claims based on sexual orientation were...

4th January 2018
BY S Chelvan

The new Asylum Policy Instruction on Sexual Orientation Issues in the Asylum Claim, published last Wednesday, marks an unwelcome retrograde step for the Home Office, which still continues to apply the ‘voluntary discretion test’ to gay asylum claims, even though this has been held to be unlawful, as a matter...

8th August 2016
BY S Chelvan

Monday: 3:30pm. Like most asylum lawyer geeks — you know who you are — I was hanging on every word of the Prime Minister when he made his announcement on how many Syrian “refugees” would be provided resettlement in the UK. He was at pains to distinguish between refugees and...

9th September 2015
BY S Chelvan

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...

23rd July 2014
BY S Chelvan
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