Today the Lords gave judgment in AH (Sudan), an important asylum case involving a “country guidance” decision from the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, but specifically on the question of internal relocation: whether it’s reasonable to expect a refugee subject to persecution in Darfur to go elsewhere in Sudan, say to Khartoum – in which case http://www.lependart.com he won’t succeed in an asylum claim here – or whether that’d be unduly harsh.
The AIT initially ruled it’d be reasonable in this case to expect the applicants to move to Khartoum; but in April Free Movement welcomed the Court of Appeal judgment reversing that conclusion, saying it was refreshing, and imposed common sense in this area. Garden Court Chambers said the CA judgment was a dramatic liberalisation of the test that could reopen previously unsuccessful asylum claims.
The Lords were having none of that. They all agreed that the AIT had applied the correct test, in spite of its “infelicitous drafting”, in Lord Brown’s words. Lady Hale said appellate courts should be slow in Cheap Oakleys interfering with the decisions of expert tribunals – and she “could not believe” that the AIT had really misdirected itself in law, making it clear that the test for “undue harshness” remains a stringent one, thus dishing Garden Court’s hopes. Lord Hope thought the applicants and the Court of Appeal had subjected the AIT’s decision to “unduly critical analysis”.
As you were, then, on internal relocation.
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