All Articles: Exclusion

Upper Tribunal dives into the Refugee Convention exclusion clauses

The signatories of the Refugee Convention thought that some people didn’t deserve protection on account of having committed particularly heinous crimes. They therefore introduced “exclusion clauses”, found at Article 1F of the Convention. Ac ...

13th May 2022 By

Court of Appeal rejects lowering threshold for denying refugee status to extremists

How serious must a person’s “extremism” be to justify exclusion from the Refugee Convention? Three years ago, the Court of Appeal in Youssef & N2 v Secretary of State for the Home Department lowered the bar for exclusion from the Co ...

14th January 2021 By

Iraqi military doctor wins refugee exclusion appeal

The extremely long-running case of AB (preserved FtT findings; Wisniewski principles) Iraq [2020] UKUT 268 (IAC) has finally been allowed outright, subject to any further appeal from the Secretary of State. The appellant, an Iraqi doctor employed to w ...

16th September 2020 By

Tribunal told to think again on exclusion from refugee status of Iraqi military doctor

The First-tier and Upper Tribunals seem to have gone rather badly wrong in the case of MAB (Iraq) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1253, involving an Iraqi doctor who was formerly employed to care for prisoners by Iraqi ...

22nd July 2019 By

Refugees can lawfully be deprived of status under EU law

The Court of Justice of the European Union has decided in joined cases C‑391/16, C‑77/17 and C‑78/17 M, X and X that recognised refugees who commit serious crimes can be lawfully deprived of their refugee status under EU law and that there is no ...

17th May 2019 By

Refugee to be deported to Somalia after 30 years in UK following robbery conviction

The Court of Appeal has upheld the deportation of a refugee known only as AM who entered the UK in 1987 aged 11. Having grown up and been educated in the UK, AM held several jobs at different times, had been married and had three estranged British chi ...

9th May 2019 By

Losing subsidiary protection because of “serious crime”

In C-369/17 Ahmed, the Court of Justice of the European Union has held that member states must take account of all the circumstances of the crime committed by an individual before deciding that it is a “serious crime” which justifies exclu ...

19th September 2018 By

Rwandan bishop allegedly involved in genocide wins second settlement appeal

A Church of England bishop accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Rwandan genocide has won an appeal by the Home Office challenging his right to settle in the UK. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Ruhumuliza [ ...

7th June 2018 By

Asylum can be refused for general promotion of terrorism

The Court of Appeal in Youssef v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 933 has decided that the appellant was disqualified from refugee status because he had incited terrorist acts in general. There was no requirement for there ...

17th May 2018 By

Can war criminals be expelled or excluded under EU law? It depends

The enhanced protection in Article 28(3) of Directive 2004/38/EC — that a person may only be expelled on “imperative grounds of public security” if they have resided in a member state for ten years prior to the decision to expel them — ...

9th May 2018 By

The Lounani case: when can a member of a terrorist group be excluded from refugee status?

C-573/14 Lounani (Grand Chamber, 31st January 2017) A person applying for protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention can be excluded from its provisions under certain circumstances. As the Court of Justice of the European Union explained in B and D ...

9th March 2017 By

Rwandan considered involved in genocide wins UK settlement appeal

The case of Ruhumuliza (Article 1F and “undesirable”) [2016] UKUT 284 (IAC) concerns an Anglican bishop judged by the Secretary of State on the balance of probabilities to have been involved in crimes against humanity, specifically genoc ...

28th June 2016 By

Statement of changes to the Immigration Rules HC535: analysis

Major changes to the Immigration Rules affecting refugees, Tiers 1, 2 and 5, EEA nationals sponsoring family members under the Immigration Rules, visitors, applications for Administrative Review and knowledge of language and life tests are being intro ...

11th November 2015 By

The Law and Practice of Expulsion and Exclusion from the United Kingdom

Last night I was invited to the launch for a new practitioner text edited by Eric Fripp, The Law and Practice of Expulsion and Exclusion from the United Kingdom: Deportation, Removal, Exclusion and Deprivation of Citizenship. There were a number ...

21st January 2015 By

Exclusion from the Refugee Convention

As part of my catch-up campaign on major cases not yet covered on the blog, I thought it would be helpful to post up some extracts from a case note I’ve written for the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law journal. The full case note will be ...

22nd January 2013 By