Lords allow 'particular social group' refugee appeal
18/10/2006
The House of Lords today handed down judgment in this ground-breaking appeal on the meaning of ‘particular social group’ in refugee law.
SSHD v K; Fornah v SSHD [2006] UKHL 46
K argued that her persecution by the Iranian state, motivated by her husband’s activities, was persecution for reasons of her membership of a ‘particular social group’, namely her husband’s family. Fornah feared female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone.
The judgment considered the relevance of causation in discrimination law to the law on ‘particular social group’ in refugee law.
Lords Bingham, Hope, Rodger and Brown and Baroness Hale unanimously allowed K’s appeal, reversed the decisions of the Court of Appeal and the Immigration Appeal Tribunal and restored the decision of the adjudicator.
As Baroness Hale of Richmond said (at paragraph 107 of the judgment).
“Protecting people against ill-treatment which targets members of a particular family, not for what they have done but for who they are, a practice well known to those who had lived through the horrors of the second world war when the 1951 Convention was drafted, is well within both the language and the purpose of the Convention.”
> Cick here to download judgment http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd061018/sshd-1.htm
Nicholas Blake QC and Melanie Plimmer appeared for K, instructed by Browell Smith & Company solicitors.
Fran Webber and Kathryn Cronin appeared, (instructed by Brighton Housing Trust), for Zainab Fornah, a young Sierra Leonean woman who will be subjected to female genital mutilation (fgm) if she returns home.
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Quick links
> Asylum for teenage girl who faced mutilation in Africa (19/10/06) - The Times
> Reported in The Times Law Reports, p71 (19/10/06)
