Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-000712

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/56475/2023
LP/01962/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 12th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

AAA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Hussain, counsel
For the Respondent: Mr Diwnwyz, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Phoenix House (Bradford) on 26 November 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. I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the appellant claims to fear persecution or serious harm on return to Somalia. In reaching this decision, I am mindful of the fundamental principle of open justice, but I am satisfied, taking the appellant’s case at its highest for these purposes, that the potential grave risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of his identity.
2. The factual centrepiece of the appellant’s protection claim is that he has been targeted in his home area of Somalia by a majority clan after a dispute arose between this clan and his brother about access to water for livestock. The appellant’s brother was killed in the ensuing violence and a male of the majority clan sustained serious injuries. Later, the appellant’s father was killed at the family home by the majority clan who then seized the family’s livestock. The appellant claimed that he was fortuitously out of the home at the time, but the majority clan still want him dead to exact what they consider to be sufficient vengeance for his brother’s deeds.
3. This remaking decision follows a decision I took on the papers to find that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal judge involved a material error of law. The error of law decision was taken after the respondent conceded that the judge had erred due to a failure to consider country guidance before deciding that internal relocation to Mogadishu was a viable and lawful option. In the context of the error of law decision, I preserved a wide range of the judge’s findings of fact including that the appellant’s Article 3 grounds succeeded because of his health conditions. I also preserved the findings which accepted that the central planks of the narrative account going to the protection claim had occurred.
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal
4. The appellant appealed against the refusal of his claim. The appeal was heard by the judge on 20 December 2024.
5. The judge dismissed the appellant’s appeal on asylum and humanitarian protection. The appeal was allowed on Article 3 human rights grounds due to the appellant’s serious medical needs and prognosis. For the purposes of the present proceedings, the following parts of the judge’s analysis are of importance:
a. The judge referred to unparticularised discrepancies in the appellant’s evidence at [16].
b. At [17], it was noted that the appellant’s evidence that his living family members were still being harassed by the majority clan was at odds with his evidence that they had, by that time, already left Somalia for Ethiopia. The broad conclusion was then reached that he was not “still of adverse interest”.
c. Notwithstanding the apparent finding that the appellant was not at risk on return to Somalia, the judge turned her mind to the issue of internal relocation before returning to the risk question at [18]-[19] and [21]-[23]:
The Appellant claims he cannot relocate anywhere within Somalia. The background material would indicate that the Appellant would be able to live in Mogadishu where the minority clans have the same access to services as the majority clans. There is no difference made between them by the government authorities there.
I do not find that it is reasonably likely that the Appellant would be of interest to the Ogaden clan on his return. The Ogaden clan would not know he returned as he would be returned to Mogadishu, where he can remain. His family are no longer living in their family home as they have relocated to Ethiopia. The clan will believe they have successfully driven the Appellant’s family from their home and their lands and, as the Appellant has advised, they had already taken all their cattle before the Appellant left. I do not accept the Appellant face a real risk of serious harm at the hands of the Ogaden clan on return to Somalia.
[…]
In conclusion, the Appellant has not established that he would still be of interest to the Ogaden clan. He has not demonstrated that the death of his father was not sufficient revenge for the death of one member of the Ogaden clan and the permanent harm inflicted upon another. The Appellant’s brother and father have both been killed, their cattle have been taken and the female members of the family have relocated to Ethiopia so for all intents and purposes the Appellant’s immediate family have been decimated. However, he is a member of the Wardie clan and it is reasonably likely that there are other members of his clan who are still in his home area who could be subjected to death to enable the honour of one clan against another to be satisfied, should they still be seeking that revenge. However, if there is still an adverse interest in him by the Ogaden clan and the Appellant does not wish to return to his home area, the background evidence and the case law indicates he can relocate to Mogadishu, where the clan system is not invoked and everyone is able to obtain access to services, accommodation and employment.
For the reasons given whilst I accept the Appellant’s account of the conflict between his brother and the members of the Ogaden clan over water, I do not accept they are still seeking revenge and therefore there is no reason why he could not return to Somalia, especially as the option of remaining in Mogadishu is open to him.
For the reasons given I do not find that there is a reasonable likelihood that the Appellant would suffer persecution on return to Somalia at the hands of non-State actors, being members of the Ogaden tribe. I do not find that the Appellant has a Convention reason based on his race as I do not find he has a well-founded fear of persecution by non-state actors or a real risk of harm.
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
6. At the remaking hearing, I clarified with Mr Diwnwyz the issues which remained to be resolved in the appeal. He accepted that it was impossible to conceive of how it might be reasonable for the appellant to internally relocate without facing unduly harsh conditions in view of the preserved findings that his return to any part of Somalia would breach his Article 3 human rights due to the state of his health. I was not invited to decide the internal relocation issue adversely to the appellant. Discussion next turned to the only meaningful issue to be determined, risk on return. Mr Diwnwyz accepted that the respondent had only ever challenged the proposition that the appellant would be at risk on return because he could not be regarded as credible about his underlying narrative account. This was the consistent position adopted in both the reasons for refusal letter and the respondent’s review. It was never suggested that any risk which might have existed in the past had dissipated over time or was otherwise non-existent on an objective appraisal of the appellant’s subjective fears. Given the preserved findings of facts accepting the core elements of the appellant’s underlying narrative account, I was not invited to conclude that the appellant was lacking in credibility and therefore not at risk. Mr Diwnwyz frankly observed that there was little he could say to persuade me to dismiss the appeal. Furthermore, he recognised that the appellant’s fears were demonstrably founded on a risk of persecution because of his membership of his brother’s family and that this plainly amounted to a Refugee Convention reason of membership of a particular social group, namely, the family.
7. I indicated at the conclusion of the hearing that I would be allowing the appeal on Refugee Convention and Article 3 human rights grounds with a written decision to follow.
Discussion
8. I am entirely satisfied that the constellation of facts found by the First-tier Tribunal Judge mean that this appeal must be allowed on Refugee Convention and Article 3 and Article 8 human rights grounds. The judge allowed the appeal on human rights grounds principally based on the appellant’s poor health which was so serious that his return to any part of Somalia would bring about a substantial reduction in his life expectancy. This primary finding underpinned the additional conclusion that he would experience very serious obstacles to integration. As rightly and properly recognised by Mr Diwnwyz, the Article 3 finding should have informed the analysis going to the question of internal relocation. It is definitionally unduly harsh to expect a person who has been found to succeed on Article 3 health grounds to relocate to Mogadishu. Seen as a whole, the resolution of the internal relocation issue against the appellant is impossible to reconcile with the analysis which supported the Article 3 health decision to allow the appeal on human rights grounds.
9. This left risk on return as the only meaningful issue which remained to be decided on remaking. The respondent has always taken the position that the appellant was not at risk because he could not be believed about the events which were said to have unfolded prior to his departure from Somalia. No other principled challenge to objective risk was ever taken by the respondent. It follows that once the judge decided, to a reasonable degree of likelihood, that the appellant’s primary narrative was credible, as found at [21] of the judge’s decision, there was no space for any other conclusion to be reached but that the appellant was at risk. This, taken together with the analytical approach demanded by paragraph 339K of the Immigration Rules about the important role played by previous episodes of persecution, leads me inexorably to conclude that the appellant is at risk of persecution to a reasonable degree of likelihood. As accepted by Mr Diwnwyz, the risk is for the Refugee Convention reason of membership of a particular social group.
10. For these reasons, I allow the appeal on Refugee Convention and Article 3 and Article 8 human rights grounds.
Notice of Decision
On remaking, I allow the appeal on Refugee Convention and Articles 3 and 8 human rights grounds.

P Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

3 December 2025