Jasim v Secretary of State for the Home Department

In assessing internal relocation, a tribunal must consider both safety and reasonableness, which are distinct questions. Expert country evidence is relevant but is not conclusive. A tribunal may reject an expert’s assessment of risk outside the claimant’s home area where, having considered all the country material, it is not satisfied that the evidence establishes the required likelihood of risk.

An infelicitous reference to an expert opinion having no rational basis will not amount to an error of law if the determination, read fairly, shows that the tribunal meant that the evidence did not establish the asserted link between a local threat and a risk elsewhere.

The appellant was an Iraqi Kurd whose asylum and human-rights claims had been rejected. Following a flawed earlier adjudication, the Immigration Appeal Tribunal remitted the matter for reconsideration by an immigration judge.

The immigration judge accepted that the appellant faced a well-founded fear of persecution in Kirkuk. He nevertheless held that the appellant could safely and reasonably relocate elsewhere in Iraq, including Baghdad. The appellant contended that the judge had wrongly rejected Dr Alan George’s expert evidence about clan and tribal networks, and had failed properly to use UNHCR recommendations on internal relocation.

The central issue was whether the immigration judge had materially erred in law when assessing the safety of internal relocation.

1. By a majority, the appeal was dismissed. Sir Peter Gibson and Pill LJJ held that the immigration judge was entitled to conclude, on the evidence as a whole, that the appellant had not established a real risk that the relatives seeking revenge would locate him outside Kirkuk.

2. Safety and reasonableness are distinct aspects of internal relocation. A place may be safe but unreasonable for settlement, or reasonable in practical terms but unsafe because the original persecutors can reach the claimant. The majority agreed that the present appeal turned on the safety assessment.

3. Dr George was qualified and his report was a helpful part of the country material. However, an immigration judge was not obliged to accept his opinion. Read fairly, the references to there being no basis or no rational basis for the opinion meant that the report did not establish a sufficient evidential link between the accepted threat in Kirkuk and a risk elsewhere in Iraq. The expression “no rational basis” was inappropriate if it suggested irrationality, but it did not disclose a material error of law.

4. The immigration judge had expressly taken careful account of the UNHCR recommendations. Their weight was a matter for his assessment in the context of all the evidence. No separate error of law arose from his treatment of them.

5. The claim under article 3 of the Human Rights Convention failed on the same factual basis as the asylum claim.

Per Sedley LJ, dissenting: the expert evidence provided a sufficient basis for the view that family and tribal networks could locate the appellant in Baghdad and the Kurdish north. The immigration judge’s rejection of it therefore materially vitiated the safety assessment. Sedley LJ would have allowed the appeal and remitted the matter for rehearing.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): By a majority, dismissed the appeal and upheld the immigration judge’s conclusion on internal relocation: [2006] EWCA Civ 342.

• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: The Immigration Appeal Tribunal had remitted the appellant’s appeal for reconsideration after a flawed initial rejection. The reconsideration decision of the immigration judge was the first-instance decision challenged before the Court of Appeal.