The High Court ordered a re-examination of a man’s application for international protection brought back to his native Georgia for fear of persecution for his sexual orientation.
The 25-year-old man, who was initially denied refugee status and subsidiary protection, applied to the court to overturn the confirmation of this decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) and the refusal to allow him an oral hearing on his appeal.
He arrived here in July 2019 and said in his application for international protection that he was based on a well-founded fear of persecution in Georgia by his family and Georgian society due to his membership of the LGBT social group. He also claimed to have suffered physical violence due to his sexual and romantic relationship with another man.
He was denied by the International Protection Office (IPO) and he requested an oral hearing of his appeal before the IPAT, which was denied. The IPAT later also confirmed the IPO decision and denied him refugee / subsidiary protection status.
In his lawsuit before the High Court, which challenged both the material refugee / subsidiary protection decision and the oral hearing decision, he alleged that the IPAT failed to assess his appeal individually and failed to assess his sexual orientation first found. Rather, it decided that this edition had most recently examined a variety of other aspects of its narrative in relation to its claim.
He alleged that the IPAT erred in law by failing to take into account relevant considerations, namely relevant information on the country of origin in relation to the lack of effective state protection for LGBT people in Georgia.
He alleged that the IPAT decision was irrational in several ways, including because it fused plausibility and credibility and led to inadmissible speculation and guesswork about the man’s conduct and behavior in the particular circumstances when he found he was going to Police should have left after attacking him.
He said it was not reasonable to expect him to do so when Georgian police routinely ignore those who have been subjected to homophobic attacks and who are complicit in their own persecution.
The respondents, IPAT and the Minister of Justice, dismissed the complaint.
Judge Cian Ferriter said in a ruling that he believed the man was correct in his allegation that the decision simply did not address or take into account the substantive matters raised in his request for an oral hearing.
He issued an order to annul the IPAT decision of August 17, 2020 and sent it back to the IPAT for a new decision on the question of an oral hearing.
From this it followed, so the judge further, that due to the illegality of the decision to refuse an oral hearing, the subsequent IPAT decision to refuse his status as a refugee / subsidiary protection failed and the application also had to be reconsidered.
