CM (Cameroon) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

On an appeal from an asylum determination, an appellate tribunal must decide the issues raised by the grounds of challenge and cannot replace an immigration judge’s factual assessment with its own view of the evidence. Where material findings are unchallenged, and the conceded errors in the appellate determination cannot stand, the case should not be remitted for a rehearing if those findings are sufficient to sustain the result. A claim may succeed on refugee and human-rights grounds where the findings establish a real risk of persecution or treatment contrary to Article 3, including domestic violence from which the state cannot provide effective protection. An Article 8 conclusion must, however, be intelligible and related to the findings; an unexplained reference to Article 8 cannot be upheld.

The appellant, a Cameroonian woman suffering serious illness, claimed asylum after fleeing a violent husband. An immigration judge allowed her appeal on refugee and human-rights grounds, finding that she faced renewed violence, lacked effective state protection, and could not safely relocate.

On reconsideration, a Senior Immigration Judge set aside that decision and dismissed both claims. The Home Secretary accepted that the reconsideration decision contained material errors, including an impermissible finding that it was fanciful to suppose that the husband could trace the appellant. The central issues were whether the first determination was sufficiently challenged to permit a rehearing and whether its uncontested findings sustained the appeal.

1. Appeal allowed. The reconsideration decision could not stand. Its finding that the husband could not trace the appellant was outside the grounds of challenge and was unsupported by reasoning which impermissibly treated local word-of-mouth information as less capable than sophisticated information systems in the United Kingdom.
2. The refugee Convention conclusion in the immigration judge’s determination was intelligible and complete. Although the Court did not necessarily endorse the reasoning on the particular social group issue, that issue had not been properly challenged on reconsideration. In light of K v SSHD [2006] UKHL 46, it was open to a properly instructed tribunal to find women in Cameroon to be a particular social group within the meaning of the 1951 Convention.
3. The uncontested findings of renewed personal violence and absence of effective state protection were sufficient to sustain the human-rights result under Article 3. The immigration judge should have expressed and structured that conclusion more clearly, but it was a tenable and in the circumstances inexorable conclusion from the findings.
4. There was no intelligible Article 8 finding capable of recognition or upholding. That part of the decision therefore fell away, but the appeal remained successful on the refugee and Article 3 grounds.
5. A rehearing was inappropriate because the unchallenged findings were sufficient to sustain the original decision. The immigration judge’s decision was restored without further recourse. The respondent’s cross-appeal failed.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the appeal from the Asylum & Immigration Tribunal, restored the immigration judge’s original decision, and dismissed the respondent’s cross-appeal.
• Asylum & Immigration Tribunal: on reconsideration, set aside the immigration judge’s determination and dismissed the refugee and human-rights claims.
• Immigration Judge Phull: allowed the appeal on refugee and human-rights grounds.