R (AH and Others (Sudan)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees intervening)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 14 November 2007 |
| Neutral Citation | [2006] UKIAT 38 |
| Date | 14 November 2007 |
| Court | Immigration Appeals Tribunal |
House of Lords
Before Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead, Baroness Hale of Richmond and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood.
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 consideration of conditions in the place of habitual residence had to be the starting point of the assessment. 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 (Lord Justice Buxton, Lord Justice Moore-Bick and Lord Justice Moses)UNK ((2007) EWCA Civ 297) allowing an appeal by AH, IG and NM against the decision of an asylum and immigration tribunal ordering their return to Sudan.
Mr Rabinder Singh, QC, Miss Lisa Giovannetti and Mr Robert Kellar for the Home Secretary; Mr Manjit Gill, QC, with Mr Abid Mahmood for AH, with Mr Christopher Jacobs for NM, and with Mr Basharat Ali, solicitor, for IG; Mr Tim Eicke for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, intervening.
LORD BINGHAM said that the respondents, Sudanese nationals, had fled from Darfur and claimed asylum in the United Kingdom. In each case the secretary of state's refusal of asylum had been upheld on appeals to an adjudicator or immigration judge and to the Court of Appeal.
The respondents appealed to the House of Lords, where the appeals were heard with that of an Albanian Kosovar, whose case raised the same issues and who gave his name to the resulting judgment: Januzi v Secretary of State for the Home DepartmentELR ((2006) 2 AC 426).
The House had referred the respondents' cases to the asylum and immigration tribunal for further reconsideration. After the tribunal upheld the refusal of asylum, the respondents again appealed to the Court of Appeal, and on that occasion succeeded in the decision now under appeal It had been accepted throughout that the respondents had a well founded fear of persecution in Darfur. The issues below were whether, if returned to Khartoum, the respondents would be at risk of persecution there and, if not, whether it would for other reasons be unreasonable or unduly harsh for them...
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