In a follow up to my last post on Country Guidance cases generally and the Court of Appeal judgment in SG (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWCA Civ 940, the existing Country Guidance case on Zimbawe, that of EM and Others (Returnees) Zimbabwe CG [2011] UKUT 98 (IAC), has been overturned by the Court of Appeal.

There is no judgment as such because the appeal was allowed by consent: the Secretary of State agreed that the determination was too legally flawed to stand. The grounds of appeal were particularly strong: that the tribunal had wrongly relied on completely anonymous evidence where the identity of the source was unknown even to the tribunal and therefore immune from any meaningful evaluation and that the Secretary of State had failed to disclose relevant evidence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office suggesting that the situation in Zimbabwe was likely to deteriorate again as elections approach.

A copy of the consent order and statement of reasons can be found here.

This means that the most definitive treatment of risk on return to Zimbabwe is the previous Country Guidance case of RN (Returnees) Zimbabwe CG [2008] UKAIT 0008, which by the Court of Appeal’s analysis in SG (Iraq) might be said to be undisturbed by any lawful subsequent determination.

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