All Articles: Credibility
Important Court of Appeal judgment on expert evidence and “credibility”
The Court of Appeal has handed down a major judgment on the correct approach to assessing whether a person is a victim of trafficking: MN v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1746. Although this was the central question in the ...
4th January 2021Family life: substance over form
Uddin v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 338 is an important case in which the outgoing Senior President of Tribunals provides the judges who serve in his Immigration and Asylum Chamber with very strong guidance on mixed cred ...
18th March 2020Vulnerable adults in the immigration tribunal
In SB (vulnerable adult: credibility) Ghana [2019] UKUT 398 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has provided a steer on how immigration judges should approach evidence given by vulnerable adults, in addition to that provided in the Joint Presidential Guidance No ...
9th January 2020Helpful case on when failure to claim asylum in a safe country damages credibility
Immigration judges must assess whether an asylum seeker had a reasonable opportunity to claim asylum in a safe third country before holding that a failure to do so should damage their credibility, the Court of Appeal has ruled. KA (Afghanistan) v Secr ...
12th June 2019Briefing: how lawyers can help young people in the asylum system
Claiming asylum can be a traumatic experience. Having to relive the worst events in your life while you undergo a series of interviews and hearings is bad enough. It is even worse when Home Office officials are highly sceptical about a young person’ ...
10th December 2018Falling at each hurdle: credibility assessments in women’s asylum claims
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 so ...
16th June 2015The Heart of the Matter: Assessing Credibility when Children Apply for Asylum in the European Union
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 coup ...
31st March 2015EU court bans credibility ‘tests’ for gay refugees
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 ...
4th December 2014Asylum credibility: timely new case from Strasbourg
In a case that in some ways exceptional but in many ways entirely ordinary, the UK Border Agency this week rejected an asylum claim by a young Afghan man. The reason the case was exceptional is that he had previously worked with the British armed forc ...
4th October 2012