AE & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department

For refugee-status purposes, internal relocation is reasonable only where the proposed safe haven is a viable and realistic alternative to the area in which persecution is feared. The assessment compares conditions in those two places, viewed through the asylum seeker's individual characteristics. It does not compare conditions in the safe haven with conditions in the United Kingdom.

Human-rights and humanitarian reasons for permitting a person to remain do not themselves create refugee status under Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. A medical condition unrelated to the feared persecution, which does not make the safe haven unviable, is neutral to that refugee-status inquiry.

The appellants, a Tamil husband and wife from Sri Lanka, appealed from the Immigration Appeal Tribunal's decision notified on 12 November 2002. An adjudicator had found that the husband had a well-founded fear of persecution in Jaffna but not in Colombo. The adjudicator nevertheless allowed both asylum appeals because relocation to Colombo would be unduly harsh, particularly in view of the wife's post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Tribunal concluded that neither appellant would be at real risk in Colombo and that the psychiatric evidence did not establish an entitlement to refugee status. The Court of Appeal considered whether the correct internal-relocation inquiry under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees permitted the wife's condition and wider humanitarian considerations to make Colombo an unreasonable safe haven.

1. Appeal dismissed. Lord Phillips MR delivered the judgment of the Court. The Tribunal was entitled in law to conclude that the husband was not a refugee because Colombo was a safe and viable place of internal relocation.
2. Under Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, internal relocation is relevant to both whether an applicant is outside the country because of a well-founded fear of persecution and whether that fear is well founded. The proper inquiry is whether it would be reasonable to expect the applicant, at the time of determination, to live in the proposed safe haven.
3. The inquiry requires a comparison between conditions in the area where persecution is feared and those in the proposed safe haven, taking account of the applicant's characteristics. A safe haven is not a realistic alternative where its conditions present dangers or vicissitudes equal to or worse than the feared persecution. The comparison does not extend to the conditions that the applicant enjoys in the United Kingdom.
4. The Court explained the scope of R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Robinson [1998] QB 929. The expression unduly harsh reflects the reasonableness inquiry, but refugee status must be kept distinct from rights under the Human Rights Convention and from humanitarian reasons for granting leave to remain. The Convention standards owed by a state granting asylum do not prescribe the standard that an applicant must enjoy in a safe part of his own country before internal relocation can be reasonable.
5. On the assumed facts, the wife's psychiatric condition did not arise from persecution of her or from the husband's feared persecution in Jaffna. There was no evidence that treatment was unavailable in Colombo or that her condition made Colombo unviable as a safe haven. Her condition was therefore neutral when deciding whether the husband could reasonably relocate there. It might support a human-rights or humanitarian application, but it could not confer refugee status. The appeal was dismissed.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): dismissed the appellants' appeal in [2003] EWCA Civ 1032 .
• Immigration Appeal Tribunal: by a decision notified on 12 November 2002, concluded that internal relocation to Colombo did not entitle the appellants to refugee status.
• Adjudicator: on 26 June 2001, allowed the asylum appeals on the basis that relocation to Colombo would be unduly harsh.