United Kingdom Immigration and Asylum (AIT/IAC) Unreported Judgments

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Upper Tribunal

(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: UI-2024-002919

[PA/62826/2023]

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House	Decision and Reasons Promulgated
On 21 February 2025
	On 27 th of February 2025

 

Before

 

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge MANUELL

 

Between

 

S U T

(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)

Appellant

and

 

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Respondent

Representation :

For the Appellant: Mr S Winter, Counsel

(instructed by Gray & Co Solicitors)

For the Respondent: Mr J Thompson, Home Office Presenting Officer

 

 

DECISION AND REASONS

 

1.                   Permission to appeal was granted in part only by Tribunal Judge Lodato (as he then was) on 24 June 2024 against the decision to dismiss the Appellant's asylum appeal made by First-tier Tribunal Judge McGrade in a decision and reasons promulgated on 20 May 2024.

 

2.                   The Appellant, a national of Namibia born on 16 September 1975, had entered the United Kingdom as a visitor on 15 July 2019. She overstayed and eventually claimed asylum on 18 March 2022. Her application was refused by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on 30 November 2023. The Appellant claimed that she feared harm on return because of forced marriage and related domestic violence.

 

3. Judge McGrade found that much of the Appellant's evidence was unreliable. She had not provided a reasonable explanation for her long delay in claiming asylum. The Judge found that the Appellant had been promised in marriage to a much older man when she already had a boyfriend. The Judge did not accept the Appellant's claim that her boyfriend had been murdered in 2015. His death was accidental. The Appellant subsequently undertook a course in counselling and child development in Windhoek between 2018 and July 2019, after which she applied for an attachment at a hospital in Omaruru, close to where her mother was living. The Appellant then applied for a visit visa to the United Kingdom. Although the Judge found that the Appellant had embellished her account, nevertheless he accepted that the Appellant was a member of a Particular Social Group and faced a risk of serious harm if returned to Namibia. The Judge went on to find that there was a sufficiency of protection, alternatively that the Appellant could safely and reasonably relocate. Hence the appeal was dismissed.

 

4.                   Permission to appeal was granted in part only by Judge Lodato, whose decision was as follows:

 

"In the first ground of appeal, it is argued that the judge erred in failing to conclude that the Appellant was at risk of persecution given the primary findings of fact. This challenge is misconceived because a natural reading of [18] to [19] of the decision reveal that the judge disbelieved parts of the Appellant's narrative evidence but nonetheless concluded to the lower standard of proof that she was at risk of persecution. This was the foundation on which the ancillary questions of sufficiency of protection and internal relocation fell to be considered. This issue was resolved in the Appellant's favour and it is not arguable that it discloses an arguable error of law.

"The second ground of appeal is a challenge to the judge's findings on sufficiency of protection. It is argued that the judge ought to have attached greater weight to certain parts of the CPIN touching on this issue. This is little more than a disagreement with the findings of fact reached by the judge. He was not obliged to engage in a line-by-line analysis of the CPIN, but to give reasons why he considered that there was sufficient protection available to the appellant in Namibia. This he did and it is perfectly clear why that conclusion was reached. The reasons are not arguably defective in law.

"The third ground of appeal challenges the conclusions reached in relation to whether the Appellant could reasonably relocate. I consider there to be arguable force to the suggestion that the judge was bound to address his mind to the place where it was suggested that it would be reasonable for the Appellant to move to. Without tethering the analysis to a particular place in Namibia, it is difficult to understand the basis on which the Appellant's personal circumstances were considered. Without consideration of a particular place, the reasons in support of the finding that internal relocation is a reasonable option takes on an abstract quality. Instead, the focus turned to whether the persecutors would be inclined, or have the wherewithal, to trace her in a another unspecified location. This arguably lost sight of her personal circumstances in whether it would be unduly harsh for her to relocate. The first and second grounds of appeal are not arguable. The third ground of appeal discloses an arguable and material error of law. I grant permission for ground 3 to be argued and refuse permission in relation to grounds 1 and 2."

 

5. There was no rule 24 notice but permission to appeal was opposed by the Respondent.

 

6.                   No application was made on the Appellant's behalf to challenge First-tier Tribunal Judge Lodato's limited grant of permission to appeal, despite the obvious problem that the refusal decision left nothing to appeal. The Judge's finding that there was a sufficiency of protection was a complete answer to the asylum appeal, and any error of law in relation to relocation could not be material.

 

7.                   Mr Winter for the Appellant attempted to grasp that nettle, however late in the day. He submitted a skeleton argument in the following terms:

 

"The current grant by the Ft-T has allowed permission in relation to internal flight but has refused permission in relation to Ground 2. It is unclear why the Ft-T would allow permission in relation to internal flight when it refused permission in relation to sufficiency of protection. If there is a sufficiency of protection then it is difficult to see the relevance of internal flight."

 

8.                   Mr Winter sought permission to appeal Ground 2, i.e., sufficiency of protection. He submitted that there was a lack of clarity in the Judge's findings, so that they should be reopened. The Judge had accepted that the Appellant faced persecution. He had not explained what would happen if she were found by her family. That brought internal flight back into play, and Judge Lodato had granted permission to appeal on the issue of internal flight. The error of law appeal should be allowed.

 

9. Mr Thompson for the Respondent submitted that the Judge had covered sufficiency of protection adequately, which was why Judge Lodato had refused permission to appeal on that ground. The Judge had found at [22] that the non-state actors, i.e., the Appellant's father or his cousin, had neither the resources nor the desire to take steps to trace the Appellant, should she choose to live elsewhere in Namibia. The Judge had noted that the Appellant had lived in Windhoek previously, which was the place of reasonable relocation identified in the reasons for refusal letter and review. Wider permission to appeal should be refused and the onwards appeal should be dismissed.

 

10.               As Mr Winter pointed out in his skeleton argument, the effect of the refusal of permission to appeal by Judge Lodato on the sufficiency of protection ground was to end any onwards appeal, in the absence of a wider grant. The renewed application to the Upper Tribunal was out of time by a matter of many months but the Tribunal heard the application in any event. There was nothing in the renewed application which had not been fully addressed by Judge Lodato. The Tribunal adopts and endorses the reasons he gave for refusing permission to appeal. [21] of Judge McGrade's decision provides ample, sustainable findings that there is a sufficiency of protection available against the non-state actors feared by the Appellant.

 

11. It is, strictly speaking, unnecessary to consider the alternative of internal relocation. Nevertheless the Tribunal will address the question as that was the basis on which the error of law hearing went forward. The Tribunal accepts Mr Thompson's submissions, which need not be repeated here. It is plain from the evidence presented to the Judge that Windhoek (population circa 450,00, Namibia's largest city) was the primary place of reasonable location. The Appellant had already lived there for an appreciable time without any problems.

 

12. The Tribunal concludes that the Judge's decision was sufficiently reasoned and demonstrated that all of the evidence put forward by the Appellant or on her behalf had been properly considered. The Tribunal finds that there was no error of law in Judge McGrade's decision, so that the onwards appeal must be dismissed.

DECISION

The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.

There was no material error of law in the First-tier Tribunal's decision and reasons, which stands unchanged.

 

 

Signed Dated 26 February 2025

 

R J Manuell

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Manuell