Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-004623
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/56427/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 22nd of June 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LANE

Between

RB
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Hodgetts
For the Respondent: Mr Tan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 1 June 2026

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
1. The appellant is a female citizen of Bangladesh. She appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against a decision of the Secretary of State dated 10 October 2022 to refuse her international protection. The First-tier Tribunal dismissed her appeal. The appellant now appeals to the Upper Tribunal.
Background
2. The appellant and her two daughters (who are dependants in her appeal) arrived in the United Kingdom on 7 August 2022. The appellant claimed asylum on 10 October 2022. The appellant’s claims to fear persecution if returned to Bangladesh on the basis that she exposed the financial mismanagement of the school where she worked. The individual in charge at the school whom she exposed had targeted the appellant and her daughters. She fears she will be killed by this man and his family and her children harmed. She also fears being the victim of domestic violence from her ex-husband and a local gang which had seized her land.
The First-tier Tribunal’s decision
3. At [15], the judge found that the appellant is divorced and that the appellant had suffered ‘difficulties with the school leadership’. The judge accepted the appellant’s ‘account that she is involved in a land dispute in Bangladesh and I accept the evidence she has produced from her lawyer that she is at risk of an unfair finding in the case.’ The judge found the appellant ‘generally credible in her account of what had happened Bangladesh.’ At [35-36], the judge found that the appellant was not at real risk of harm from her ex-husband. That finding has not been challenged in the renewed grounds of appeal.
The grant of permission
4. Granting permission, Upper Tribunal Judge Blum wrote:
The grounds do not identify any specific evidence that was before the judge that the appellant, because she was a woman, would be unable to adequately utilise the Bangladeshi legal system or otherwise avail herself of the protection of the state against any threat she may face if removed to Bangladesh on account of the land dispute or on account of her whistleblowing regarding the school finances.
There is however some potential confusion in the decision. The judge finds that the appellant has previously been subjected to ‘persecution’ for a Convention reason (which requires a risk of serious harm plus an absence of a sufficiency of protection), which could only have been because, as a woman, she was a member of a PSG (in other words, she was previously subjected to serious ill-treatment arising from her whistleblowing and the land dispute because she was a woman, and there had been a failure of state protection). However, the judge later concludes that, although there was a real risk that if the appellant were returned to Bangladesh would face treatment sufficiently serious to amount to ‘persecution’, she would not face that treatment on account of her membership of the PSG. If there is a finding that the appellant had previously faced serious ill-treatment for a convention reason and there was an insufficiency of protection, it is not clear to me why the appellant would not face this if returned on account of her membership of the same PSG. I have sufficient disquiet as these findings that I consider all the grounds to be arguable.
Analysis
5. I share Upper Tribunal Judge Blum’s disquiet regarding what appears to be the contradictory findings of the First-tier Tribunal. The judge at [33] wrote: ‘I have found the Appellant’s account of her treatment in Bangladesh before she left to be credible and the Respondent has accepted that the treatment she alleged did constitute persecution. I find, for the reasons I have given above and having regard to the Respondent’s position, that there is a reasonable degree of likelihood, a real risk, that the Appellant would be at risk of treatment that would constitute persecution if returned to Bangladesh.’ Yet, at [37] the judge finds: ‘Having carefully considered the evidence provided and applying the lower standard I find that there is not a reasonable degree of likelihood that the Appellant will face a risk of persecution for a convention reason if she were to be returned to Bangladesh.’ Clearly, something had changed in the appellant’s circumstances or those pertaining in Bangladesh to lead the judge to that conclusion.
6. Matters are not helped by the judge’s unclear discussion of the issues surrounding the appeal on asylum grounds at [34] et seq. The judge embarks on a discussion of the appellant’s membership (or lack of membership) of a particular social group (PSG) in the course of which he reaches his (unchallenged) findings that the appellant will not be at real risk from her ex-husband. Other than risk from the ex-husband, the judge finds at [36] that there was ‘was no other evidence to suggest that in the Appellant’s particular circumstances she faced a risk of persecution as a result of being a women in Bangladesh.’ As the judge acknowledges, that leaves the question of whether the appellant is at Article 3 ECHR risk on return (i.e. at risk for a non-convention reason).
7. The grounds of appeal complain that the judge has failed to explain why, if the appellant has been persecuted in the past, she does not face a future risk of persecution. That is, of course, a legitimate question but it ignores the judge’s explanation for finding that past persecution will not be repeated for two reasons: (i) the appellant will not fall into the PSG of women at risk of domestic violence and (ii) the appellant would enjoy a sufficiency of protection in respect of any threat she may face as a result of her involvement in the land dispute litigation. It may be arguable that the judge has too narrowly defined the PSG of women at risk of persecution in Bangladesh but that issue is not relevant to the outcome of the appeal if his findings as regards sufficiency of protection are sound in law. In other words, if the judge’s findings on sufficiency of protection are correct, the appellant would not succeed even if she could show that she is a member of a PSG. Indeed, sufficiency of protection is the determining issue in the judge’s analysis; internal flight had been discounted, the judge finding at [42] that it would not be reasonable for the appellant to relocate within Bangladesh.
8. The judge’s findings on sufficiency of protection are at [40]:
In respect to the reference to the ruling party this CPIN is out of date and does not reflect the changes that occurred in Bangladesh in August 2024. The Chairman of the School’s links with the Awami league would not now appear to be relevant. There is no evidence that the those who pose a threat to the Appellant in respect of the land dispute have any immunity to act outside of the reach of the authorities. The Appellant says a false case has been made against her but has not produced any evidence to show why she could not avail of the protection of the authorities to defend herself against such a case and it appears to have advanced, according to the documents produced, largely uncontested given the Appellant’s absence. The Appellant is personally, I have found, in fear of persecution as a woman but has not produced or given sufficient evidence that she has reason to fear domestic violence or GBV other than the fact that she is a woman. Her evidence that as a single woman she would face a particular risk, as opposed to discrimination and stigma, is insufficient to show that protection against such treatment in her particular circumstances does not exist. The evidence provided by the Appellant herself that in the face of abhorrent sexual crime against women and girls steps have been taken to prevent persecution of someone in the Appellant’s position. Were there evidence that she was at risk of domestic violence from her ex-husband then the recognised disinclination of the Police to investigate such crimes may have led to a different finding but I find that the Appellant has not shown that there is a reasonable degree of likelihood that they would not be able to avail of protection from persecution.
9. The grounds [7] challenge those findings on the basis that the judge has ‘concluded, with minimal reasoning, that [the appellant] “has not shown” that protection would be unavailable [40]. That conclusion does not grapple with how a single mother facing a pending criminal case brought by (or at the behest of) influential opponents could practically obtain the police/judicial protection s.34 requires, nor with the FTT’s own finding about police disinclination in gendered contexts’ and [8] that the judge found that the 2023 CPIN had been ‘“overtaken by events” after the August 2024 changes, but still relied on it without explaining how those changes translate into effective, accessible protection for this Appellant in her home area.’
10. I find that challenge to be without merit for two reasons. First, it is clear from the decision at [40] that the judge did not ‘rely’ on the CPIN. He refers to paragraph 2.1.1 of the CPIN (‘In general, the state is able to provide effective protection. However, the willingness of the authorities to protect will depend on the profile of the person, in particular their links with the ruling party’) but only to observe that the reference to ‘ruling party’ is out of date; since August 2024, the Awami League, with which the chairman of the school at which the appellant had experienced difficulties, has not been in power in Bangladesh. The judge was correct to factor that change of circumstances into his analysis of the appellant’s risk on return. Secondly, it was not for the judge to ‘grapple’ with matters which it was for the appellant to prove by evidence. It was for the appellant to establish that she could not avail herself of the protection of the state now that the party with which her enemies had been associated was no longer in power. Mr Hodgetts, in his submissions, argued that the appellant was an absconder from court bail in Bangladesh but that was not an argument which had been advanced before the First-tier Tribunal. It is not relevant to the question of error of law in the Tribunal’s decision. Moreover, there is force in the respondent’s submission that the appellant (unlike her co-defendants in the land litigation) had never entered a defence. As the judge noted, unless and until she defends herself in the litigation, it is not clear whether the appellant will or will not be protected.
Conclusion
11. I find that the First-tier Tribunal’s findings on sufficiency of protection are adequate. In particular, it was open to the judge to find that the appellant had failed to discharge the burden of proving that she would not be able obtain the protection of the state on return to Bangladesh. Irrespective of any lack of clarity in the judge’s analysis of the appeal on asylum grounds, his findings on sufficiency of protection are determinative of the appeal on asylum, Article 3 ECHR and humanitarian protection grounds. Accordingly, I dismiss the appeal.

Notice of Decision
This appeal is dismissed.

C. N. Lane
Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

Dated: 9 June 2026