RA (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Underhill |
| Judgment Date | 17 December 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWCA Civ 1763 |
| Date | 17 December 2014 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | C5/2014/1538 |
[2014] EWCA Civ 1763
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM UPPER TRIBUNAL IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
(FIRST-TIER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SULLIVAN)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2
Lord Justice Underhill
C5/2014/1538
Ms Siobhan Lloyd (instructed by Lawrence Lupin) appeared on behalf of the Applicant
THE RESPONDENT DID NOT APPEAR AND WAS NOT REPRESENTED
This is a renewed application for permission to appeal against a decision of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). Given the nature of an application of this sort, I need set out the facts only in the barest outline.
The applicant is a Nigerian national, born on 18 May 1996 and thus now aged 18 and a half. She is an orphan, although she does apparently have some family still in Nigeria. She was brought to this country in March 2012, when she was only 15, by a family friend referred to in the papers as K, with whom she had been living in Lagos, and was delivered by her to the family of another Nigerian woman in London who is referred to as M. She was made to do household chores for M's family. She was not allowed to leave the house. She had no room of her own and had to sleep on the floor of the living room. She was sometimes hit and slapped. Most seriously, she was introduced to men who were brought to the house and who expected, and apparently had already paid, to have sex with her. She was raped on several occasions. This eventually stopped when she complained to M's husband.
The applicant was in due course able to leave M's home and in December 2002 she claimed asylum and/or humanitarian protection in this country on the basis that she was a victim of trafficking and that if she were returned to Nigeria she would face mistreatment or degrading treatment.
By a letter dated 2 August 2013, the applicant's claim was refused, but she was granted discretionary leave to remain for a period of a year, which would take her to two or three months after her 18th birthday. That is in accordance with Home Office policy as regards unaccompanied asylum seeking children.
The applicant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal. Her claim was heard on 7 October 2013 by First-tier Tribunal Judge Sullivan. She had the benefit of representation by counsel. By a determination promulgated on 22 October her appeal was dismissed. The judge accepted that she was a victim of trafficking, but she concluded, for reasons which she gave carefully and in some detail, that the applicant would not on her return be the victim of retrafficking nor would she be destitute and forced to maintain herself by prostitution.
An important factor in the judge's reasoning on the first of those points was that she concluded that the applicant had not been brought to this country by any kind of criminal trafficking gang. It is clear from the country guidance case of PO (Trafficked Women) Nigeria [2009] UKAIT 46— confirmed, although only on what is described as a interim basis, by this court in PO (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 133— that there is an important difference in the cases of victims of trafficking who are returned when they have been trafficked in the first instance by gangs and other returned victims of trafficking. In the former case there is a real risk that gangs who have made an investment in the original trafficking and have targeted to achieve a certain amount of money by forcing the victim, typically, into prostitution will make every effort to secure their return so that they can achieve the return that they expected to obtain from the trafficking. Gangs are sufficiently organised in many cases to be able to identify and retake victims of trafficking who escape but are returned to Nigeria. As I say, this is the subject of some discussion in the country guidance case and reflects both the expert evidence and the published materials. (I should add that it is important, as Lord Justice Maurice Kay says in the PO case, not to be hypnotised by the term "gang". Quoting Lord Justice Thomas, he says that that is...
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