XZ (Russia) & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department

The real-risk standard for future persecution or serious harm has a corresponding past-event inquiry: whether there was a real possibility that past traumatic events occurred and were targeted acts. Severe trauma and expert evidence may explain inconsistencies and limited knowledge, but claimants still need sufficient affirmative evidence linking the harm to a protected ground or motive. A tribunal may decline to infer political targeting where the evidence does not establish the alleged political role or a connection between that role and the attacks, particularly where other explanations are available. Past suffering alone does not establish a future real risk. An appellate court should not interfere merely because another inference was reasonably open.

These conjoined appeals concerned a Chechen mother and son whose asylum and humanitarian protection claims had been rejected. Their initial appeals failed, but reconsideration followed findings of arguable errors of law. On linked second-stage reconsideration in June 2007, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal accepted that both appellants had suffered severe trauma and that several serious incidents had occurred. It nevertheless found insufficient evidence that the incidents were politically targeted or that the appellants faced an individualised risk on return. The central issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the tribunal had erred in law by failing to infer a connection between the attacks and the alleged political activities of the first appellant’s husband and the second appellant’s father.

Sedley LJ gave the principal judgment. Longmore LJ and Pill LJ agreed. The conjoined appeals were dismissed.

1. The applicable framework was the 2006 Regulations, transposing the minimum standards directive, together with corresponding amendments to the Immigration Rules. No issue arose about the detailed provisions or the tribunal’s use of a real-risk test. The relevant inquiry was whether there was a real possibility that the past traumatic events had been targeted acts. If so, recurrence on return would give rise to a real risk of persecution or serious harm.
2. Psychiatric evidence could explain inconsistencies and limited recollection. It did not require the tribunal to accept every account. The tribunal properly accepted severe trauma and several consistent incidents while recognising that it still needed sufficient affirmative evidence from some source to establish entitlement to protection.
3. The tribunal was entitled to require evidence connecting at least some attacks with the alleged political activity. The number and seriousness of the incidents, the background evidence, and the family history did not compel an inference of political targeting. The incidents remained capable of explanation by indiscriminate lawlessness or internal Chechen conflict. The tribunal had found no reliable evidence of the husband’s political profile or of a connection between that activity and the attacks.
4. The tribunal had asked the correct question: whether the appellants faced an individual threat. It was not an error of law for it to decline an inference which it might legitimately have drawn. Its treatment of the late account of threats conveyed by the first appellant’s mother was also open to it, given the chronology and absence of dependable first-hand evidence.
5. The tribunal had followed RM (Young Chechen male – risk – IFA) Russia CG [2006] UKIAT 50 in finding no generalised risk to Chechens returning from the United Kingdom. Past suffering during internal armed conflict, without proof of a motive making at least some attacks political persecution or cruel or inhuman treatment likely to recur on return, did not establish entitlement to international protection.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Dismissed the conjoined appeals and upheld the second-stage reconsideration determinations.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: On linked second-stage reconsideration in June 2007, accepted that serious traumatic incidents had occurred but rejected the alleged political targeting and individualised return risk. The earlier appeals had failed, with reconsideration directed after arguable errors of law.