Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003312
PA/65150/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 12th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
And

WA (AFGHANISTAN)
(anonymity order made)
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Mullen, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: Mr Cox, Counsel instructed by Latta & Co

Heard at Melville St, Edinburgh on the 27th November 2025

Anonymity

Unless and until a tribunal or court directs otherwise, the Respondent is granted anonymity. No report of these proceedings shall directly or indirectly identify him or any member of his family. This direction applies both to the Appellant and to the Respondent. Failure to comply with this direction could lead to contempt of court proceedings.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Respondent is a national of Afghanistan born in 2007. By its decision dated the 29 May 2025 the First-tier Tribunal dismissed his appeal against the decision to refuse to grant him refugee status. It however allowed his appeal on protection grounds, on the basis that he was entitled to humanitarian protection. The Secretary of State now has permission to appeal against that decision.
2. The Respondent states that he is from a farming community in Khost. As a child and teenager he would see Taliban fighters in his area and he always avoided them. He was afraid of them and he knew that they were causing the fighting that was all around. If they catch you they would kill you and they are very cruel. When he was about 15 years old his parents told him that he had to leave Afghanistan. This was because, he was told, his father had had some role working for the previous Afghan government and there was a danger that the Taliban would seek retribution against the family. It was the Appellant who was deemed to be most at risk because although he had brothers, they all suffered from a mental disability.
3. The Secretary of State refused to grant protection. She found no evidence to support the Respondent’s belief that his father had been connected with the old government. The Respondent had been unable to give any detail at all about what his father might have done. It did not appear that the Respondent’s father had in fact been targeted by the Taliban. He himself had never had any interaction with them. The First-tier Tribunal broadly agreed with this analysis, finding at its §41 that it is “difficult to know” what risk the Respondent might face, given the limited nature of the evidence.
4. The Tribunal then went on to direct itself to the country guidance case of AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan (CG) [2020] UKUT 130 (IAC). Although the Tribunal had held in that case that a single adult male in good health could likely relocate to Kabul without undue difficulty, in this case the Respondent was vulnerable. He had separated from his family at a young age, and perhaps understandably was suffering from poor mental health. A psychological report described him as “emotionally immature”. He had limited skills, and no experience of working. Social workers in Scotland had concluded that he could not yet live on his own: the Tribunal concluded from this that he clearly could not manage to live in Kabul where he would likely “flounder” and end up destitute. On that basis, the appeal was allowed.
5. The Secretary of State objects to this reasoning on the simple premise that the Tribunal had no business considering how the Respondent might fare in Kabul, since it had not found there to be any risk of harm to him in his home area. The Tribunal had, in effect, allowed the appeal on the grounds that the conditions in the place of internal relocation were ‘unduly harsh’. It is the Secretary of State’s case that on the Tribunal’s own findings, there was nothing to prevent the Respondent returning to his family.
6. For the Respondent Mr Cox mounted an impressive defence of the decision. He submitted that the Tribunal had not in fact embarked on an ‘internal flight’ analysis. It had rather been considering the material conditions in Afghanistan as a whole, and had been entitled to find these so wanting that a grant of humanitarian protection was warranted.
Discussion and Findings
7. The first thing I would say is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Tribunal’s analysis of the likely socio-economic conditions that the Respondent would likely face in Kabul. This is a young man who left his home as a child, for reasons he cannot understand. The dislocation from his family, and no doubt the difficult conditions he faced on the journey to Europe, have left him feeling anxious, stressed and depressed. He has no skills to speak of and, as the Tribunal rightly notes, social workers are not satisfied that he is able to live independently. All of that was relevant to whether he would manage in Kabul, or as the Tribunal put it, “flounder”.
8. The difficulty, as the Secretary of State rightly identifies, is that such ‘internal flight’ findings are irrelevant in circumstances where the Tribunal has found there to be no risk of harm in the Respondent’s home area.
9. The question is whether those findings are simply findings on possible relocation to Kabul, or whether they are part of a wider analysis of the humanitarian conditions the Respondent will likely face if he goes home.
10. The closest that the Tribunal comes to considering the Respondent’s position on return to his home area comes at its paragraph 45:
45. Given that his family comprises in total eight siblings, of whom he, being the sole healthy male sibling with the other five male siblings having mental health difficulties, it seems clear that his family would be able to offer him little support. There are two sisters. It could be argued that he would be in a position to offer support to them. However, his family clearly felt that it would be better for him not to be in the family unit due to the perception of danger, which they felt was present for him.
11. Mr Mullen submitted that there would appear to be no evidential basis for the finding that “it is clear that his family would be able to offer him little support”. If there was evidence as to why that might be the case, it is not explained in the body of the decision of reasoning. I would have, with respect to the Tribunal for what is otherwise a carefully reasoned decision, to agree. Although the Respondent has explained that he has disabled siblings, and obviously his parents took the decision to send him away, these facts do not in themselves establish that the Respondent is likely to suffer serious harm in his home area.
12. I am satisfied that the failure to make reasoned findings in respect of the Respondent’s home area does amount to a material error of law. Mr Mullen invited me to set the decision aside, and to remit the matter for hearing de novo in the First-tier Tribunal. Mr Cox had no objection to that course of action if the error was found to be made out. As I observed to the parties, a case has been identified as potential ‘country guidance’ on matters relating to Afghanistan, in particular the risks arising to those who have spent time in the West. This is listed at the beginning of March 2026. The parties were in agreement that it would be in the interests of justice to stay this matter until that new country guidance becomes available.
Decisions
13. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside for error of law.
14. The decision in the appeal will be remade de novo in the First-tier Tribunal on a date after the new country guidance decision on Afghanistan becomes available.
15. There is an order for anonymity in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce

Immigration and Asylum Chamber
10 December 2025