| IMMIGRATION — Asylum — Internal relocation — Claimant fleeing persecution seeking asylum in United Kingdom — Whether unreasonable to expect claimant to relocate to safe haven in own country — Test to be applied
AH (Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees intervening)
HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead, Baroness Hale of Richmond and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood): 14 November 2007
In determining whether it would be unduly harsh to expect an asylum seeker to relocate to a safe haven in another part of his country, there was no requirement that the starting point of the assessment had to be consideration of conditions prevailing in the area from where the claimant had fled. It was for the decision maker to determine what weight was to be given to that, and all other relevant factors, in the context of the particular facts of the case.
The House of Lords so held in allowing an appeal by the Secretary of State for the Home Department from the decision of the Court of Appeal (Buxton, Moore-Bick and Moses LJJ) [2007] EWCA Civ 297 allowing an appeal by the claimants, AH, IG and NM, Sudanese nationals who had fled from the Darfur region and claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, against the decision of an asylum and immigration tribunal ordering their return to another area of Sudan, Khartoum.
LORD BINGHAM said that the claimants had a well-founded fear of persecution in Darfur. They would not be at risk of persecution in Khartoum and the issue was whether it would be unreasonable or unduly harsh for them to be relocated there. The Court of Appeal held that in reaching its decision the tribunal had directed itself that conditions in the place of intended relocation would not be unreasonable unless they would infringe an applicant's rights under art 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights or its equivalent. Had it done so, the tribunal would have been plainly wrong but, read as a whole, its judgment did not suggest that it had made such an error. The correct approach to relocation was that stated in Januzi v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] 2 AC 426. The decision-maker had to decide whether it was reasonable to expect the claimant to relocate by taking account of all relevant circumstances pertaining to the claimant and his country of origin. The Court of Appeal held that the tribunal, in deciding the reasonableness of the claimants’ proposed relocation, had failed to make as its starting point the conditions that had prevailed in their place of habitual residence, and that it would be unduly harsh to expect them to relocate from rural village life to a camp in the city of Khartoum. However, nothing had been said in Januzi to suggest that such a basis of comparison was to be the starting point. The weight to be given to it was a matter for the decision-maker in the particular case and the tribunal had not excluded it from consideration.
LORD HOPE, LADY HALE and LORD BROWN delivered concurring speeches and LORD HOFFMANN agreed.
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Appearances: Rabinder Singh QC, Lisa Giovannetti and Robert Kellar (Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretary of State. Manjit Gill QC, with Abid Mahmood (Blakemores, Birmingham) for AH, with Christopher Jacobs (White Ryland) for NM, and with Basharat Ali, solicitor (Aman Solicitor Advocates) for IG. Tim Eicke (Baker & McKenzie) for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, intervening.
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