For some reason the Home Office has just released a swathe of inspection reports into a wide range of Home Office operations. In practical terms, this makes it impossible for the press to pick out more than one or two stories from the reports and it therefore very effectively reduces...
After more than a decade since Limbuela, and three years after Refugee Action, Home Office policy continues to drive asylum seekers into destitution. The Refugee Action report, Slipping Through the Cracks, candidly outlines these failings of the asylum support system. This is hardly the first time these sorts of flaws...
The violence in Libya has reached such a high level that substantial grounds are shown for believing that a returning civilian would, solely on account of his presence on the territory of that country or region, face a real risk of being subject to a threat to his life or...
In tribute to beloved author Michael Bond (1926-2017), who died yesterday, I am republishing this blog post reviewing the film Paddington, based on the character created by Bond. The blog post was originally published on 1 December 2014 and versions of it appeared in the New Statesman and Financial Times. Law...
In March 2017 the Home Office announced a new policy of reviewing whether all refugees require protection at the end of a 5 year initial period of Refugee Status. This policy is effective for all existing and future applications for Indefinite Leave to Remain (‘ILR’) as a Refugee. This policy...
The pilot of the Athens Refugee Legal Support Project has now run for 2 months now. We work out of a community centre in Athens with the support of ILPA and Garden Court Chambers. Weekly reports from UK legal volunteers (solicitors, barristers, case workers) tell a similar story. The Greek...
R (Bashir) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 397 The British Sovereign Base Areas (“SBAs”) are small British-run areas on the Cyprus islands that survived the former colony’s independence. The Home Office has taken the position for a number of years that the Refugee Convention...
Case C-36/17: Daher Muse Ahmed v Bundesrepublik Deutschland The EU does not want asylum seekers to ‘shop around’ its Member States. To this end, various Regulations exist to prevent someone who has already claimed asylum in one Member State from subsequently doing so in another. But what if an applicant...
Is the First-Tier Tribunal (FTT) bound to take into account a Country Guidance (CG) case that is issued by the Upper Tribunal after the date of the FTT hearing, and after the date the FTT judge signs the determination, but before that determination is promulgated? The short answer, in general,...
To summarise, figuratively the Secretary of State does not have a leg upon which to stand either factually or legally. These were the words used by Mr Justice McCloskey, president of the Upper Tribunal, in the judicial review case of Mohamed Al-Anizy. Needless saying, he was not very impressed by...
LC (Albania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 340. The Home Office has relied on outdated guidance to determine asylum applications from Albanian nationals, the Court of Appeal has held. The judgment in LC (Albania) will have far-reaching effects for those people denied protection under...
In an oral decision in the case of R (on the application of AO & AM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (stay of proceedings – principles) [2017] UKUT 168 (IAC) given on 28 March 2017, the Upper Tribunal refused the Secretary of State’s application to stay the...
Shortly after Christmas in 2009, a young woman from Somalia flew into Stanstead and claimed asylum. She had just turned 18. As later accepted by the Home Office, she had experienced severe depredations in her home country. This included her rape at the age of six in the presence of...
Al Chodor and Others (C-528/15) In a highly significant judgment the CJEU has shown, in effect, that the Home Office has unlawfully detained hundreds or even thousands of individuals seeking international protection. Page contentsThe background factsThe question for the CourtThe legal frameworkThe judgmentWhat kind of national law?The old positionThe UK Government’s...
“The Tribunal’s conclusion was… that [in order to fabricate an asylum claim] the appellant had allowed himself to be anaesthetised and then branded with a hot metal rod” – Elias LJ, KV (Sri Lanka) In this area of law, it is sometimes hard to live with the reality of what...
The Home Office has announced a new policy of reviewing whether all refugees require protection at the end of a five year initial period of leave. The policy appears to be effective immediately for all refugee settlement applications, including for refugees already resident in the UK and who were expecting...
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 in 2010, these circumstances include those guilty of committing terrorist...
‘[I]t has to be said, Asmara does not feel like the capital of a country generating asylum applications with a 85% grant rate’ (sic) – Informal Home Office report of UK visit to Eritrea, 9-11 December 2014 In 2014, nationals of Eritrea were the second largest group of asylum...
According to estimates, there are 10,000-13,000 victims of modern slavery living in the UK. In order to tackle this problem, the UK government operates a Modern Slavery Strategy, and the Border Force plays its part by identifying potential victims, and ‘targeting’, ‘intercepting’ and ‘disrupting’ traffickers, primarily at the border. How...
The High Court has ruled in the case of R (On the Applications Of TN (Vietnam) & US (Pakistan)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2017] EWHC 59 (Admin) that over 10,000 asylum appeals had been decided under procedure rules so unfair that the determinations could be...
If the case of Tarakhel was considered another body blow to the Dublin system, the recent Court of Appeal case of NA (Sudan) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 1060 has picked up the Dublin system up off the ropes for another round. The...
In a new case on dental age assessments, the tribunal has ordered that a young asylum seeker to undergo a dental x-ray and age assessment. If he refuses, his court case will be struck out. The case also gives general guidance on the correct approach to be followed in similar...
Recently, after being introduced to someone, I mentioned that I work on statelessness policy. When faced with the confused look I am growing to recognise when I tell people about my work, I began to explain: some people don’t have citizenship of any country. He (thinking hipster-type ‘citizens of the...
Written by Eleanor BONNER & Beate DASARATHY Following on from the Proving Torture conference in October last year which Free Movement wrote about at the time, Freedom from Torture has released a new report, ‘Proving Torture: Demanding the Impossible,’ which highlights UKVI’s significant failings when it comes to considering medical...
The Home Office has made public its internal guidance for officials on the process and criteria for admitting children to the UK who were living in the Calais camp. The obligation to admit the children comes from section 67 of the recently passed Immigration Act 2016, a section otherwise known...
In HD (Trafficked women) Nigeria CG [2016] UKUT 00454 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal considered the position of victims of trafficking returning to Nigeria. Under the previous country guidance case, PO (trafficked women) Nigeria [2009] UKAIT 00046, in order to demonstrate a real risk of persecution on return to Nigeria, a...
The Upper Tribunal has issued a new Country Guidance case on Eritrea: MST and Others (national service – risk categories) (CG) [2016] UKUT 443 (IAC). It weighs in at 459 paragraphs plus voluminous appendices. The findings are good news for Eritrean refugees seeking sanctuary; the tribunal recognises the danger they face...
The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, has criticised Home Office handling of applications by family members of refugees settled in the UK. His new report found the Home Office was too quick to refuse applications which might ultimately succeed once fuller evidence was provided, particularly where it...
The UK government, and Europe, has spared no expense to ensure that wherever the people trying to get to Europe end up, it isn’t here. But the courts are seemingly doing their best to help. The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Secretary of State for the Home Department v ZAT...
The Home Office has published a new 285 page report of a UK fact finding mission to Eritrea from February 2016 and updated its country policy documents on illegal exit from Eritrea and military service. From a quick glance, it looks like there is little change in the Home Office position,...
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...
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 genocide, in Rwanda in 1994. He was therefore excluded from the protection of the Refugee Convention...
Interesting from the BBC: Converts to Christianity are being unfairly treated by the asylum system, according to a report by a parliamentary group. But how do you prove someone is Christian? The full report by the All Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief is available here:...
The President of the Upper Tribunal, Mr Justice McCloskey, has allowed on human rights grounds the appeal of the mother and brother of a refugee child from Eritrea. The mother and brother were the appellants and the child in the UK was the sponsor. The appellants had fled Eritrea after...
Very upsetting news on Saturday from the French lawyers in the migrant camp in Calais. You can donate here to show solidarité. Today, March 17th 2016, just prior to 6 p.m., an arson attack was committed against the wooden cabin occupied by the Calais Appeal Legal Centre. This wooden cabin, built...
An interesting set of draft Council conclusions on convergence in asylum decision practices obtained by Statewatch sets out a roadmap towards greater consistency in asylum decision making. There is a lot of work to do on this front, as shown by IRIN in their excellent and infographic heavy piece Playing the EU asylum...
Page contentsWhy do we think this?What does the research show?Memories are actively reconstructed each time they are recountedMemories change over timeMemories change over time, sometimes very significantlyTruthful witnesses change as much as 30% of the details of an event on subsequent retellingsMoreover…Truthful witnesses often remember more details over timeWhat have...
