Noune v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 03 December 2000 |
| Date | 03 December 2000 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL
Before Lord Justice Schiemann, Lord Justice Tuckey and Sir Swinton Thomas.
Asylum - fear of persecution by non-government agents
A conscientious civil servant unwilling to co-operate with insurgents seeking to exploit her work to promote their cause could seek the protection of the international community as a refugee for asylum within the Geneva Convention when the law enforcement agencies in her country were ineffective to protect her from the insurgents' persecution.
The Court of Appeal so held when allowing an appeal by Souad Noune, an Algerian woman, from the dismissal by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal dated June 22, 2000 of her appeal against the order of the special adjudicator who had dismissed her claim for asylum. The court remitted the application to a differently constituted tribunal for rehearing.
The applicant had worked in the telegraphic department in Algeria when Islamic group contacted her to send messages to Moscow and Tokyo with a threat to her life if she refused. She refused and fled Algeria.
Mr Nicholas Black, QC, for the applicant; Mr Rhodri Thompson for the Home Secretary.
LORD JUSTICE SCHIEMANN, giving the judgment of the court, said that in the paradigm case the persecutor was the Government or its agents. This case was concerned with persecution by forces hostile to the Government.
The general purpose of the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) (Cmd 9171) and (1967) (Cmnd 3906) was to enable a person who no longer had protection against persecution for a Convention reason in his own country to turn for protection to the international community.
The motives of the persecutor could include non-Convention reasons. It was not necessary to show that they were purely political which might be express or imputed, for example, an unwillingness to co-operate could be taken as an expression of political opinion.
The international refugee protection regime was meant to come into play only in situations when the home state failed to provide for the potential victim the degree of protection which the international community expected a state to provide for its citizens.
A brief consideration of the position of many Frenchmen in this country at various points during the last war would illustrate the variety of situations in which a fleeing minister might legitimately claim to be a refugee. The same...
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