Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-004676
(PA/66023/2024)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 6th February 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE

Between

KG (ETHIOPIA)
Appellant
AND

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Mr Nadeem of Counsel, instructed by Alison Wells Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr Terrell, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 8 January 2026

Anonymity

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

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Appellant is a national of Ethiopia born in 1993. He appeals with permission against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal to dismiss his protection and human rights appeal.

2. The basis of the Appellant’s claim is that he has a well-founded fear of persecution in Ethiopia for reasons of his political opinion, and ethnicity. He claims that he is a Tigrayan and that he and his father were both supporters of the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front. The Appellant states that he attended demonstrations in Ethiopia to protest the death of singer Hachalu Hundessa and that as a result he was arrested and detained for approximately 2 months in 2021.

3. The Respondent refused to grant protection. Although it was accepted that he had been on a demonstration, it was not accepted that he was a supporter of the TPLF, or that he was even Tigrayan. The Respondent noted that the Appellant spoke Amharic rather than Tigrinya; he had grown up in the south of Ethiopia whereas the Tigrayan population tended to live in the north; he appeared to know little about Tigray culture. As to his alleged arrest, he had been inconsistent about when or why this had happened. Furthermore the Appellant had failed to claim asylum in any of the safe third countries that he had passed through en route to the United Kingdom, and this was held to undermine the credibility of his claim to be afraid.

4. The First-tier Tribunal broadly agreed with the Respondent’s reasoning and the appeal was dismissed.

5. On 6 November 2025 Upper Tribunal Judge Reeds granted the Appellant permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. The Appellant has six grounds of appeal, each of which addresses some aspect of the Tribunal’s credibility assessment.

The Grounds of Appeal: Discussion and Findings

6. I take grounds (i) and (v) together, since they both relate to the First-tier Tribunal’s approach to the standard of proof in this appeal. The Appellant claimed asylum in October 2024 and so this was an appeal that had to be considered in accordance with the structure set down in s32 Borders Act 2022:
32 Article 1(A)(2): well-founded fear
(1) In deciding for the purposes of Article 1(A)(2) of the Refugee Convention whether an asylum seeker’s fear of persecution is well-founded, the following approach is to be taken.
(2) The decision-maker must first determine, on the balance of probabilities—
(a) whether the asylum seeker has a characteristic which could cause them to fear persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion (or has such a characteristic attributed to them by an actor of persecution), and
(b) whether the asylum seeker does in fact fear such persecution in their country of nationality (or in a case where they do not have a nationality, the country of their former habitual residence) as a result of that characteristic.
(See also section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004 (asylum claims etc: behaviour damaging to claimant’s credibility).)
(3) Subsection (4) applies if the decision-maker finds that—
(a) the asylum seeker has a characteristic mentioned in subsection (2)(a) (or has such a characteristic attributed to them), and
(b) the asylum seeker fears persecution as mentioned in subsection (2)(b).
(4) The decision-maker must determine whether there is a reasonable likelihood that, if the asylum seeker were returned to their country of nationality (or in a case where they do not have a nationality, the country of their former habitual residence)—
(a) they would be persecuted as a result of the characteristic mentioned in subsection (2)(a), and
(b) they would not be protected as mentioned in section 34.
(5) The determination under subsection (4) must also include a consideration of the matter mentioned in section 35 (internal relocation).

7. In JCK (s32 NABA 2022) Botswana [2024] UKUT 00100 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal gave the following guidance about the interpretation of this provision:

1. Sections 31-36 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 apply in an appeal where the claim for international protection was made after 28 June 2022.

2. In an appeal to which s32 NABA 2022 applies, the proper approach is to address each of the questions posed by the section expressly and sequentially.

3. Question 1 is whether, on the balance of probabilities, the claimant has a characteristic which could cause them to fear for one of the five reasons set out in the Refugee Convention. In simple terms: is there a Convention reason?

4. Question 2 is whether, on the balance of probabilities, the claimant “does in fact fear” such persecution. This is the ‘subjective fear’ test.

5. Questions 3-5 are matters of objective evaluation and must each be determined on the lower standard of proof: ‘a reasonable degree of likelihood’. Is it reasonably likely that there is:

• a risk of harm
• an absence of state protection, and
• no reasonable internal flight alternative

8. It was common ground that none of that had any relevance for the purpose of the second limb of the protection claim, namely whether the Appellant was entitled to a grant of humanitarian protection: insofar as that element of the claim was concerned, the standard of proof remained one of ‘reasonable likelihood’ throughout the assessment.

9. The Appellant contends before me that the First-tier Tribunal failed to apply this law. Ground (i) is concerned with the Tribunal’s self-direction on the appropriate standard, and ground (v) is concerned with its structural approach.

10. I begin by considering whether the Tribunal did err in its self-direction as to the applicable standard. Things started off well. At its paragraph 14 the Tribunal said this:

14. To succeed in an appeal on asylum grounds, an Appellant must show a well-founded fear of persecution for a Convention reason (race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, political opinion). To succeed on an appeal on Humanitarian Protection (HP) grounds an Appellant must show a real risk of serious harm at the date of the hearing.

Nothing wrong with that.

11. Then at paragraph 15 it said this:

15. The burden of proof rests on an Appellant. The case of JCK v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Botswana) [2024] UKUT 100 (IAC) provides guidance on applying the new standard of proof. In the first stage, the standard of proof is “a balance of probabilities” (evidence is in the Appellant’s favour by at least 51%); in the second stage, the standard of proof is “a reasonable degree of likelihood” (i.e. more likely than not).

12. Mr Nadeem submits there to be two clear errors here. First of all, it is not helpful to introduce percentages as a means of understanding the relevant standard: a party could, afterall, succeed on ‘balance’ if the evidence was 50.01% in their favour. Secondly, and more fundamentally as far as Mr Nadeem is concerned, the parentheses in the final sentence appear to indicate that the Tribunal misunderstood what a ‘reasonable degree of likelihood’ actually means.

13. Mr Nadeem submits that any ambiguity here is compounded by paragraphs 16 - 17 of the decision where the Tribunal says this:

16. The Appellant made his application on asylum, HP, Article 3 grounds. I deal with each in turn.

17. I note that the Respondent’s review refers to the lower standard of proof, but this is an error as the case is a post-Naba case and both parties accepted that .

14. Ground (i) then, is that the Tribunal cannot have applied the correct standard of proof because it did not understand what it was. Ground (v), in essence, is that had the Tribunal adopted the sequential approach recommended in JCK, it would have been alert to the fact that the position is more nuanced than it is expressed at paragraph 17, and that the ‘HP, Article 3 grounds’ referred to at 16 were quite unaffected by the provisions of NABA 2022.

15. Before me, Mr Terrell squarely acknowledged that insofar as the asylum appeal is concerned, something does appear to have gone awry in the Tribunal’s self-direction. He submits, however, that any error is quite immaterial. He points out that paragraph 17 of the Tribunal’s decision seeks to make a distinction between the two standards, and that being the case, it is likely that the final sentence, in particular the words in parentheses, is a slip. Further, he adopts Mr Nadeem’s point about the sequential approach in JCK to submit that on the facts, none of this mattered. If the Tribunal did, as suggested by Mr Nadeem, apply the higher – civil - standard throughout its fact finding, then this was in accordance with s.32 NABA 2022 and JCK. It simply never got to the question of future risk, which would have required an assessment applying the lower ‘refugee’ standard of reasonable likelihood.

16. With some reluctance, I have concluded that Mr Terrell is correct about the asylum decision. The most significant error in the Tribunal’s self-direction was to say that ‘reasonable likelihood’ means “more likely than not”: those words describe the civil standard. Looking at the Tribunal’s reasoning, it did however do what the statute requires of it. It considered whether the Appellant was ‘in fact afraid‘ for one of the Convention reasons. It is not immediately apparent from its reasoning what standard it held the Appellant to at this stage, but assuming it was the civil standard, that is perfectly acceptable. Having performed that exercise, and found very resolutely against the Appellant, there was very little to say about the final analysis, as to whether it was reasonably likely that he would be harmed. Whichever standard it applied at this stage, the outcome would have been the same, since there was, on the Tribunal’s analysis, nothing to put in the Appellant’s side of the scales here.

17. What then, of the humanitarian protection limb of the claim? As the Secretary of State accepts, the applicable standard is one of reasonable likelihood to all aspects of the claim. As I have set out above, it is not at all clear to me that the First-tier Tribunal understood that. I am however wholly satisfied that the outcome would have been no different had the Tribunal conducted a separate analysis of this matter. That is because the Appellant was so comprehensively disbelieved about everything, with multiple reasons being given to reject his claim. Nowhere is there any indication that any part of this claim would have been accepted had the correct, lower, standard, been applied.

18. Ground (iii) is concerned with paragraph 26 of the decision, which reads:

26. I find that his account of his arrest and detention were also lacking in credibility. He claimed that he was arrested as a result of the murder of Hachalu Endessas which he said occurred in June 2020, but the background information shows that he was in fact killed in July 2020. He told the Tribunal that he had googled the date which implies that he did not know it. I also find that he has therefore in all likelihood googled Tigrayan festivals too which is why he was able to give more details today about Ashenda that he had been able to give at his AI. (sic)

19. Mr Nadeem points out that Hachalu Hundessa, the singer to whom the decision refers, was in fact killed at the end of June, and the Tribunal has therefore based its adverse finding on a mistake of fact. The representatives before me agreed that this likely arose because the Tribunal was looking at the media reports of his death, which were dated in early July. I, and Mr Terrell, accept that there is here an error of fact. The difficulty with the challenge, however, is that this was not what led the Tribunal to draw an adverse inference. What it found troubling was that the Appellant admitted that he had to search for the date online. The error of fact made no difference at all to that reasoning. I am bound to say that I struggle to see why checking a date online means someone is not telling the truth. Many of us ‘google’ dates all the time, including dates that one might think we had committed to memory, such as the day our bins are collected. It is certainly not a point I would have taken against the Appellant, but it is not one that is challenged before me, and in fairness to Mr Nadeem, he may have struggled to show it to be perverse.

20. Mr Nadeem made no submissions on Grounds (iii) and (iv) but I deal with them for completeness.

21. Ground (iii) submits that the Tribunal was wrong to have found it implausible that the Appellant would not have been brought up speaking Tigrinya, or would have been taught about specifically Tigrayan cultural occasions. This is submitted to be an “untested generalisation about language acquisition and cultural knowledge”. I do not accept that. In fact the Tribunal explains very clearly why it found this to be implausible: because it was the Appellant’s own evidence that his parents were passionate Tigrayan nationalists and that they cared very much about their culture and language.

22. Ground (iv) is that the Tribunal impermissibly required corroboration. I do not accept that. The Tribunal evaluated the evidence before it and made findings on it.

23. Finally, ground (vi) is that the Article 8 assessment was so brief as to be unlawful. This is unarguable, and in fairness Mr Nadeem accepted that it stands and falls with the claim as a whole, since the claim rested entirely on whether there might be very significant obstacles to integration. For the reasons set out by the Tribunal, its clear conclusion was that there were not.

24. I would conclude by noting that there was one other matter in issue between the parties that is not mentioned in the First-tier Tribunal decision, or in the submissions before me. That is the Respondent’s assertion in the ‘reasons for refusal’ letter, that there would in any event be no risk arising from any association with the TPLF, since the organisation had entered into a cessation of hostilities agreement with the Ethiopian authorities in 2022.

Decisions

25. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is upheld and the appeal is dismissed.

26. There is at present an anonymity order in this ongoing protection appeal.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
30 January 2026