Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000042

First-tier Tribunal No: HU/54867/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 27th of June 2025

Before
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NORTON-TAYLOR
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HOSHI

Between
FA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the appellant: Mr T Hussain (appearing remotely), Counsel, instructed by Halliday Reeves Solicitors
For the respondent: Ms L Clewley, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 19 June 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.
No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

Introduction
1. The appellant, a citizen of Côte d’Ivoire born in 1985, appeals with permission against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Andrews (“the judge”), promulgated on the 30 October 2024, by which she dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection and human rights claims.

2. The appellant arrived in United Kingdom in 2012 and claimed asylum. That claim was refused a couple of months later and an appeal dismissed in August 2012 (“the 2012 FTT decision). An onward appeal to the Upper Tribunal was dismissed in November 2013 (“the 2013 UT decision”). A series of further submissions were made to the respondent, the latest of which were dated March 2022. The respondent treated these as a fresh claim giving rise to a right of appeal, which in turn led to the judge’s decision with which we are concerned.

3. In summary, the appellant has always claimed to have been from a politically active family and was himself involved in the politics of Côte d’Ivoire, specifically on behalf of the Ivorian Popular Front (“IPF”) and in support of ex-President Gbagbo.

4. His account was roundly rejected in the 2012 FTT decision on credibility grounds. It was not accepted that the appellant or family members had been politically involved, or that they had been persecuted/ill-treated as a result, or that there was any risk on return to Côte d’Ivoire.

The judge’s decision
5. Before the judge, the appellant essentially relied on the same protection claim as had been put forward and rejected in 2012: [22]. He maintained that he would be at risk on return by virtue of the political profile of his family and as an individual. Reliance was also placed on Articles 3 (in respect of a number of health conditions) and 8 (in respect of paragraph 276ADE(1)(vi) of the Rules – now paragraph 5.1(b) of Appendix Private Life - and the existence of very significant obstacles to integration).

6. In terms of documentary evidence which had not been before the FTT in 2012, the appellant relied on an expert country report from Ms Karen O’Reilly and a news article purporting to relate to the death of the appellant’s parents. That evidence was said to undermine the findings of the 2012 FTT decision and to disclose a risk on return.

7. The hearing before the judge proceeded without a Presenting Officer. There was no dispute as to the appellant’s immigration history, or health conditions (depression, chronic Hepatitis B, sickle-cell anaemia, and the history of TB: he had not been receiving treatment for the sickle-cell or TB). There is no dispute that the judge accurately summarised the relevant issues to be determined: credibility and risk as regards the protection claim; Article 3 as to the risk of suicide; Article 3 in respect of the appellant’s health more generally; and Article 8, both in respect of its place within the Rules and without: [8].

8. The Judge directed herself to the well-known Devaseelan principles, with reference to the 2012 FTT decision: [14].

9. The appellant was treated as a vulnerable witness: [17]. The judge noted the absence of a copy of the 2012 FTT decision. It was agreed by the appellant’s Counsel (Mr Hussain) that the extracts from that decision quoted in the respondent’s reasons for refusal letter could be relied on as accurately stating what had been found in the previous appeal: [19].

10. The judge referred to the expert report from Ms O’Reilly and accepted that she was a country expert on Côte d’Ivoire: [27].

11. Having confirmed that all evidence had been taken into account and the relevant legal framework applicable to protection claims had been applied, the judge made the following core primary findings at [30]-[45]:

(a) The appellant had attended demonstrations and meetings in United Kingdom on behalf organised by the IPF;

(b) The 2012 FTT decision specifically referred to the appellant’s mental health;

(c) The sur place activities added only “very little weight” to the contention that the findings in the 2012 FTT decision were incorrect;

(d) The evidence of a witness evidence of the witness was accorded “little weight” because they had not known the appellant until 2013 and had no knowledge of any previous activities;

(e) Having regard to the Devaseelan principles, the judge attached “very little weight” to Ms O’Reilly’s expert report insofar as it addressed matters which pre-dated the 2012 FTT decision;

(f) A news article from February 2022 (which had been addressed in the expert report) was found to be unreliable as to its contents;

(g) On the lower standard of proof, and in light of the strength of the findings made in the 2012 FTT decision (and those referred to in the 2013 UT decision) and the new evidence adduced by the appellant, the judge declined to depart from the previous findings, the consequence of which was that:

i. The appellant had been untruthful in respect of the account put forward in the 2012 appeal;

ii. Neither the appellant nor his father ever worked for Mr Gbagbo and neither suffered persecution as a consequence;

iii. The appellant was never kidnapped or detained for any reason in Côte d’Ivoire;

iv. The appellant was not of any interest to anyone in Côte d’Ivoire.

12. At [46], the judge found that the principle in HJ (Iran) v SSHD [2010] UKSC 31 was not engaged because there was no evidence that the appellant would in fact wish to be politically active if returned to Côte d’Ivoire.

13. At [48]-[58], the judge dealt in more detail with the sur place claim, ultimately concluding that the appellant had failed to demonstrate that there was a risk on return in this regard.

14. The Article 3 suicide and general health issues were addressed at [60]-[64], with the judge concluding that neither availed the appellant.

15. Under the sub-heading “Paragraph 276ADE(1)(vi) of the Immigration Rules (very significant obstacles)”, the judge addressed a variety of considerations relevant to that issue. Of these, the existence or otherwise of family support addressed at [68] is the key passage with which we are concerned in this appeal and therefore we set out in full:

“68. Lack of family support? Mr Hussain asserts that the appellant has no family to fall back on in Côte d’Ivoire (ASA25). However, RFD60 explicitly states that the appellant has not claimed to not have any family still living in Côte d’Ivoire. Given that this was explicitly raised in RFD60, I say as follows. If the appellant had no family to fall back on in Côte d’Ivoire, then I would expect him to have stated this in his written or oral evidence (which he did not). Mr Hussain did not refer me to any evidence to support his assertion that the appellant has no such family. In view of all this, I am not satisfied that the appellant does not have family in Côte d’Ivoire, who might assist with his reintegration on return, and who might also assist if he cannot find employment. This is highly relevant to my reading of Ms O’Reilly’s reports, which refer to the appellant being ‘without family support’, and states that those without family support are likely to be homeless and destitute.”

16. At [69], the judge accepted that the appellant might find it difficult to find employment in Côte d’Ivoire “unless his family and/or other contacts can assist with this.”

17. The judge concluded that there would not be very significant obstacles to reintegration, nor were there any other exceptional circumstances which permitted the appellant to succeed on Article 8 grounds: [72]-[81].

18. The appeal was accordingly dismissed on all grounds.

The grounds of appeal
19. The original grounds of appeal are narrowly drawn. The only aspect of the judge’s decision which is challenged is the conclusions on very significant obstacles to reintegration and the concomitant risk of destitution. The sole specific references to the judge’s decision are [68] and [69].

20. Paragraph 2.2 of the original grounds asserts that the judge failed to take account of “material evidence regarding the absence of any surviving family members which [the appellant] could fall back on to avoid the accepted inevitability of destitution set out in the accepted country expert report.” The “material evidence” said to have been “ignored” is:

(a) A reference in the reasons for refusal letter to a claim apparently made by the appellant at some point that in 2011 his parents had been killed during “disturbances” in the capital of Côte d’Ivoire and a claim that the appellant and his brother had been detained and ill-treated;

(b) A submission contained in the appellant’s skeleton argument reflecting the first point;

(c) A reference to the appellant’s witness statement that he had found a news article from February 2022, purporting to corroborate the death of his parents and the family’s political involvement and problems connected thereto;

(d) A passage in Ms O’Reilly’s expert report stating that “If [the appellant] does not have family or community support or employment, it would be extremely difficult for him to pay for accommodation. As a result, he would be at high risk of homelessness in Côte d’Ivoire”;

(e) The news article referred to above.

21. Permission having been refused by the First-tier Tribunal, the renewed grounds relied on the original grounds and asserted that the appellant was entitled to clear findings on the “material evidence” (that referred to in the original grounds), given that it went to the issue of very significant obstacles on return.

22. Permission was granted by the Upper Tribunal on 24 April 2025.

Rule 24
23. The respondent has not provided a rule 24 response.

The hearing
24. Mr Hussain relied on his grounds of appeal. During the course of his submissions he raised what were readily apparent to be alleged errors of law which did not feature in those grounds (expressly or implicitly) and in respect of which permission had not been granted. These consisted of the following contentions: (a) the question of what family and/or friends the appellant had in Côte d’Ivoire was not put to him at the hearing, resulting in procedural unfairness; (b) a failure by the judge to provide adequate reasons for the finding that the appellant did have family support in the country; (c) a failure to take account of the fact that the appellant had been away from Côte d’Ivoire for some 15 years; and (d) a failure to treat the appellant as a vulnerable witness, or at least to have properly factored vulnerability into the assessment of the evidence.

25. When this divergence from the grounds was pointed out to Mr Hussain he immediately applied for permission to amend the grounds. Ms Clewley objected.

26. We refused the application to amend. It was inappropriate to articulate numerous new arguments during the course of submissions without having made any attempt whatsoever to have raised them at the outset of the hearing, let alone in advance of the hearing. There was no reason whatsoever why the arguments could not have been put forward in the original grounds or the renewed grounds. This is not a case in which, for example, the appellant only obtained legal representation at the last minute and had not previously had the benefit of professional eyes being cast over the judge’s decision. To have granted the application at this extremely late stage would have been significantly prejudicial to Ms Clewley, who had quite properly prepared her case on the basis of the narrowly-drawn grounds as drafted. We are fully cognisant of the need for flexibility when it comes to procedural rigour, particularly in cases concerning protection claims. However, there are limits to that flexibility. Further, and in any event, the additional arguments have, for reasons which we will set out in due course, no merit.

27. Returning back to the grounds as pleaded, Mr Hussain submitted that the absence of any support network was implicit in the appellant’s evidence, even if not expressly referred to. The judge should have inferred the absence of such support. He was unable to provide clarity as to what evidence underpinned the references to the parents having been killed during “disturbances” in Abidjan. He accepted that what was said in the skeleton argument before the judge did not constitute evidence and that the appellant’s case had essentially been predicated on the parents having died as result of their political activity, activity which had been rejected in the 2012 FTT decision and again by the judge. He acknowledged the absence of evidence in the appellant’s witness statement to support a contention that he had no family whatsoever in Côte d’Ivoire to whom he could potentially turn for support.

28. Ms Clewley submitted that the judge was correct to have found there to be no evidence from the appellant relating to the absence of any family and/or friends in Côte d’Ivoire. The appellant’s credibility had been rejected, as had the reliability of the news article. In any event, she submitted, even if the parents had died, there was no evidence to indicate that no other family members were in Côte d’Ivoire. The judge’s findings on very significant obstacles and destitution had been open to her.

29. At the very end of the hearing, the appellant (who had attended the hearing throughout) told us that his mother and father had died as result of being shot whilst in a car.

30. We reserved our decision.

Conclusions
31. We begin our task of determining whether the judge’s decision contained material errors of law by reminding ourselves that appropriate judicial restraint should be shown to the findings and conclusions of the first-instance tribunal: numerous pronouncements to this effect have been made by the higher courts over the course of several years.

32. We also remind ourselves of the narrow scope of the appellant’s appeal. The judge’s findings on the protection claim and the Article 3 suicide and medical claims have not been challenged.

33. In respect of the grounds as pleaded, we conclude that for the following reasons there are no material errors of law in the judge’s decision.

34. We first address the issue of the appellant’s parents. It is the case that at [68] and [69], the judge did not expressly state a finding that the parents were still alive. However, on the basis of the materials before the judge and now before us, we are satisfied that such a finding is implicit in her decision. By the time she came to the assessment of very significant obstacles, there had already made clear findings rejecting the claimed political activities by the appellant’s family. Given that the appellant had said nothing about his parents’ death in his witness statement and his oral evidence, and given that the only basis supported by any actual evidence (as far as we are able to discern) was that the deaths occurred as a direct result of political activity (i.e. the appellant’s own evidence put forward in the 2012 appeal proceedings and the contents of the news article) and that that evidence had been deemed unreliable, we are satisfied that the judge implicitly included the parents as being part of the available family support network when stating her findings at [68] and [69].

35. In the alternative, and for the reasons set out above, there was no evidence other than that which had already been expressly rejected which was capable of supporting a finding that the parents had died in circumstances unconnected to the claimed political activities. As mentioned earlier, Mr Hussain was unable to direct us to a source for the assertion that the deaths occurred during “disturbances” which might not have directly connected to political activities. We acknowledge that there is a reference in the respondent’s reasons for refusal letter to a claim by the appellant that the parents had died during “disturbances”, but in the absence of an original source for that, it was not necessary for the judge (or indeed us) to speculate as to what that might have meant, or in what context it was put forward by the appellant. In any event, if he had at some stage asserted that the deaths were caused during general “disturbances” we agree with Ms Clewley’s submission that of itself represented a significant inconsistency with the primary claim that they died as a direct result of their political activities.

36. There is a more fundamental problem with the appellant’s challenge. He had claimed all along that he had a brother in Côte d’Ivoire, although we note that he is also asserted that “many members of the family” were involved in politics. Even if the judge was in some way wrong in her assessment of what happened to the parents, she was plainly entitled to find that there was no evidence from the appellant to indicate that there were no family members at all still living in Côte d’Ivoire. Nothing was said in the witness statement or in oral evidence and we have not been directed to any other evidential source which might have supported the assertion that there were no family members (including the brother) who might provide support on return. The grounds of appeal simply do not grapple with this significant obstacle.

37. The suggestion by Mr Hussain that the judge should have inferred that there would be no family support is misconceived. The judge was basing her decision on the evidence, such that it was. She was quite entitled to have expected evidence from the appellant in support of the very significant obstacles/destitution claim and the absence of any family support. There was none and it is far from being an error of law for the judge not to have drawn an entirely speculative inference from what evidence had been put forward, particularly bearing in mind the fact that almost all of that evidence had been rejected.

38. Similarly, and essentially for the same reasons as just set out, there is no merit to the suggestion that the absence of any family support on return was implicit in the appellant’s evidence. It was not for the judge to have to attempt to discern the appellant’s case and to fill in obvious evidential omissions by way of implication.

39. Finally, we briefly address the five sources of “evidence” relied on in the grounds of appeal to which it was said the judge failed to have regard. The passage in the respondent’s reasons for refusal and the submission in the skeleton argument (which was not of course evidence at all) that the parents’ death was caused by “disturbances” has been dealt with at [35], above. The appellant’s witness statement only made reference to the news article, which was deemed to be unreliable. The relevant part of Ms O’Reilly’s expert report was, quite properly, predicated on the basis that the appellant would not have family support on return: the “If” at the beginning of [104] of the report was highly relevant; the risk of homelessness and possible destitution might arise “if” the appellant had no support network. In the event, the judge found that there would be family support and thus the risk of the consequences stated by Ms O’Reilly coming to pass was very significantly undermined.

40. Finally, we turn to the new arguments attempted to be raised by Mr Hussain during his submissions.

41. There was no arguable procedural unfairness. The issue of family support on return had been clearly raised in the respondent’s reasons for refusal letter and the appellant was on notice: there was no question of him being taken by surprise. There was no subsequent concession on this issue by the respondent. It was for the appellant to put forward evidence to support each aspect of his claim. For whatever reason, no such evidence was adduced. There is no principle that each and every possible matter must be directly put to an appellant, particularly where they are legally represented and are, or should be, aware of the issue in question.

42. The reasons stated by the judge for her finding on very significant obstacles and destitution were unarguably adequate. She explained that there was no evidence to support the assertion that there would be no family support on return, an explanation which was of course to be seen in the context of the adverse findings made previously.

43. The assertion that the judge had failed to have regard to the length of time the appellant had been away from Côte d’Ivoire is entirely misconceived. That particular consideration was expressly referred to at [74] of the judge’s decision where she brought together her findings and set out her overall conclusions.

44. Similarly, the assertion that the judge failed to treat the appellant as a vulnerable witness, or otherwise failed to assess the evidence in that context, is unarguable. The judge confirmed the appellant’s status as a vulnerable witness at [17] and there is no subsequent indication that she did anything other than consider his evidence in that context. We note that the central difficulty in the appellant’s case before the judge and indeed in this appeal, was the absence of any evidence having been provided as to the family support issue. There is nothing to suggest that the appellant’s vulnerability played any part in that omission.

45. In light of the above, the judge’s findings on very significant obstacles and the risk destitution were open to her and there are no errors of law in her decision.

Anonymity
46. Given that this appeal concerns a claim for international protection, it is appropriate to maintain the anonymity direction despite the judge’s unchallenged conclusion that the appellant is not entitled to such protection.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed and the decision of the First-tier Tribunal stands.

H Norton-Taylor
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
Dated: 23 June 2025