The UK Court of Appeal has held that humanitarian considerations need not be considered as part of a decision to cease refugee status, but rather the test was whether the circumstances which had led to recognition as a refugee no longer existed.
The respondent is a refugee from Somalia, who left Somalia in 2003 and entered the UK in July 2004. He was initially refused asylum in November 2004 but it was subsequently granted with indefinite leave to remain in March 2005.
The political climate in Somalia, however, changed resulting in the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) publishing guidance in 2014 on the return of refugees to Somalia. It stated that ordinary citizens that were returning to Somalia were no longer at risk as to require protection under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive. An ordinary citizen was considered a person that was not allied with any security forces, NGOs or government office. It was customary for such persons to look to their family or clans for financial support on return. It was also recognised that there was a decrease in the amount of civilian casualties. On foot of this, the Home Department deemed that the respondent was no longer at risk if he was to return to his country and a deportation order was issued in January 2015.
The First-Trier and Upper Tribunal found that the respondent was from a minority clan, did not know where his parents were, had little education or skills, and had no practical way of getting funds into Somalia. It was therefore felt that if returned to Somalia, it was likely that the he would live in conditions that fell below acceptable humanitarian standards. As a result, cessation of refugee status could not be justified.
The Secretary of State appealed on the basis that the test for cessation of refugee status applied wrongly focused on humanitarian conditions, which are relevant to Article 3 of the ECHR but not to a cessation decision.
The Court of Appeal found that “a cessation decision is the mirror image of a decision determining refugee status” in that the grounds for cessation do not go beyond verifying whether the grounds for recognition of refugee status continue to exist. The relevant question is whether there has been a significant and non-temporary change in circumstances so that the circumstances which caused the person to be a refugee have ceased to apply and there is no other basis on which he would be held to be a refugee. The Court confirmed that humanitarian standards were not the test for a cessation decision, and that the recognising State does not have to investigate whether there would be an Article 3 violation if the refugee was returned to his country of origin. Article 3 does have to be considered, but as an independent matter.
The Court ultimately returned the case to the First-Tier Tribunal for re-examination of the issues.
Click here for the decision in Secretary of State for the Home Department v MA (Somalia).