Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005770
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/02552/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 12 June 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE O’BRIEN

Between

GL
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr L Harrison of Counsel
For the Respondent: Ms S Rushforth, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Cardiff Civil Justice Centre on 9 April 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 appeals against the decision of a Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (‘the judge’) dated 1 April 2025 dismissing his appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection and human rights claim.

2. The appellant’s claim was based on his sexuality, it having been discovered by work colleagues. He claimed to have been physically attacked twice, once by his colleagues and once by strangers, and to have received threatening messages and social media posts.

3. The judge accepted that the appellant was bisexual and that he had been physically attacked but not that the attacks resulted in serious injuries and so amounted to persecution, or that they were likely to happen again. He found that the discrimination faced by members of the LGBTQI+ community did not reach the threshold for persecution. In the alternative, the appellant could safely relocate internally. The judge found that the appellant’s case did not meet the high threshold to engage Article 3 on medical grounds.

4. Permission to appeal was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Perkins on all grounds. Those grounds in short allege as follows. The judge failed properly to consider whether the treatment suffered by the appellant amounted to persecution. His assessment of future risk, sufficiency of protection and reasonableness of internal relocation failed to take into account the appellant's wish now to live openly as a bisexual man, wrongly required the appellant to live discretely and/or failed to take into account the appellant's claim to have received continuing threats after relocation. The judge applied the wrong test under Article 3. The judge consequently undertook a defective Article 8 assessment.

5. In her rule 24 response, the respondent accepted that the judge had mischaracterised the attacks and might otherwise have reached a different conclusion on past persecution. However, she argued that the judge’s findings on future persecution, sufficiency of protection and internal relocation were all safe, thus rendering the accepted error immaterial. The judge had applied the correct test for Article 3 medical cases, and had made no error in his Article 8 assessment.

6. The representatives each made oral submissions supplementing their pleaded positions. Whilst I refer below only to those matters necessary to understand my decision, I took these submissions into account in their entirety.

Ground One.

7. Ms Rushforth withdrew the concession that the judge had mischaracterised the two physical attacks on the appellant, noting in any event that there had been no concession that the attacks necessarily constituted persecution or that any such error was material. Mr Harrison did not object and dealt in detail with the issue.

8. The judge’s findings regarding the physical attacks are to be found at [20]:

‘20. The next issue is whether the Appellant faces persecution on a return to Georgia and in considering this the first matter to address is whether he was harmed in Georgia as claimed. The Appellant says that after work colleagues discovered his bisexuality in 2022 he was beaten up twice, once by some work colleagues and once by strangers. The fact that he was beaten is corroborated by his witness Maya Lababze. I have no reason to doubt that these incidents happened. However it is notable that the Appellant does not claim to have been badly injured. There are no medical reports as to his injuries. Ms Lababze, a doctor, took him to the hospital where she worked on the one occasion but she gives no details of his injuries other than “He had loads of different types of injuries … and he also had injuries to his private parts”. There is no suggestion that his treatment required him to be admitted or that any injuries were serious. If the injuries were anything more than superficial I am sure that both the Appellant and Ms Lababze, a doctor, would have given details in their statements. So far as the second incident is concerned the Appellant makes no mention of any specific injuries and did not go to hospital or seek treatment elsewhere. It is not suggested that either incident was of prolonged duration or that with either there was an intent to cause serious harm. Neither incident was reported to the authorities. I accept that these two incidents happened. I do not accept that these incidents of themselves amount to persecution.’

9. The grounds criticise the judge for overlooking the appellant’s claim that the second attack resulted in ‘broken teeth’. That claim was made in his asylum interview; when he was asked to explain the problems he experienced in Georgia (question 28), he materially responded:

‘…Georgian's are traditional people with their mentality so once they found out about my orientation, it spread not only within my family and workplace but within my neighbourhood as well, so there was a fight in the neighbourhood with the other men and they broke my teeth and now I have fake teeth because they were broken (a bridge).’

10. Nevertheless, the appellant makes no reference to this injury in his witness statement, nor does he appear to have told his psychiatric or country expert about it (they make no mention of it in their reports). It is not mentioned in his chronology or the ASA. It is not said that the judge’s attention was specifically drawn to this exchange in the appellant’s asylum interview. It was not, therefore, an error for the judge not ‘to record or reject [the appellant’s] account that on his second attack he suffered broken teeth, let alone why that did not amount to serious injury’ (per paragraph 15 of the appellant’s UT skeleton argument).

11. In any event, the appellant does not argue that he did in fact go to hospital or that he did in fact report the attack (on the contrary, the latter is accepted). Beyond the fact that he now wears a dental bridge, he gave no detail of any treatment. It was open to the judge to find that the appellant had not suffered serious injury in either attack, and certainly that the physical attacks did not of themselves constitute persecution.

12. As for the appellant’s other experiences in Georgia, the judge makes express reference to the threats received via messages and social media [15]. The appellant does not in any event say that he received any further such threats after closing his social media accounts. The appellant’s claimed difficulties with his mother are set out in his witness statement, to which the judge had express regard [10]. It cannot be said that the judge overlooked these matters.

13. As it is, any error in rejecting past persecution would be material only if the judge’s findings on future fear, sufficiency of protection and internal relocation were similarly erroneous.

Ground 2

14. The appellant alleges at paragraph 18 of his grounds that he had previously concealed his sexuality but would now be forced to live openly as bisexual. However, the appellant does not say so in his witness statement, let alone that he hid his sexuality out of fear of persecution (as opposed to family disapproval). Neither does the appellant say that he would have shared the telephone messages in question with his work colleagues but for their expected attitude towards his sexuality (on the contrary, given the private nature of the messages in question that seems inherently unlikely). The judge was entitled to conclude that the circumstances in which the appellant’s sexuality was discovered in 2022 were unlikely to recur, and his doing so did not amount to expecting an individual to hide their sexuality to avoid persecution.

15. It is nonsensical to claim that the judge failed to engage with whether there would be adequacy of state protection (per paragraph 20 of the UT skeleton argument). Detailed consideration is given to the issue at [20]-[25], in which the judge deals not only with the appellant’s individual circumstances but also protection to the LGBTQI+ community in general. The judge properly and permissibly distinguished between discrimination and persecution.

16. Given my conclusions above, any error in assessing whether the appellant’s past experiences amounted to persecution (of which, to reiterate, I have found none) would be immaterial.

17. Similarly, any error in the judge’s assessment of internal relocation would be immaterial. As it is, the decision must be read as a whole. In particular, the judge’s findings under Article 3 and on very significant obstacles to reintegration cannot and should not be read as separate from consideration of internal relocation. Consequently, I do not find that the judge overlooked the appellant’s mental health, vulnerability and extent of familial support when finding that he could relocate if necessary to avoid any risk of persecution.

Ground 3.

18. Mr Harrison accepted that it was misconceived to allege that the judge had erred in requiring the appellant to show that he was a seriously ill person. That is the first, threshold, test to be met (see AM (Article 3, health cases) [2022] UKUT 00131 (IAC)). Instead, he argued that it had not been rationally open to the judge to find that the test was not met.

19. Setting aside for one moment the fact that this was not a challenge for which permission had been given, it is hopeless in any event. The medical opinion of Dr Galappathie was that the appellant has a moderate single episode depressive disorder and PTSD. It was plainly within the range of reasonable responses to find that the appellant was not a ‘seriously ill’ person. Consequently, it was open to the judge to find that the appellant’s return would not constitute a breach of Article 3 on medical grounds, without the need to engage with the subsequent limbs of the AM test.

20. As it is, whilst Dr Gapappathie opines at paragraph 99 of his report that the risk of suicide on return to Georgia was ‘real’, he goes on to record that there was a degree of uncertainty in that opinion, given that the appellant has no past history of self-harm or attempted suicide. In short, paragraph 24(c) of the appellant’s UT skeleton argument overstates the medical evidence on risk of suicide. Dr Galappathie’s evidence did not otherwise support a finding of serious, rapid and irreversible decline or a significant reduction in life expectancy. Had the judge considered the AM test in full he would have inevitably found it not met.

Ground 4

21. This ground can be dealt with briefly. The judge did not find that there were no reasons why the appellant could not reintegrate (as asserted in paragraph 27 of the UT skeleton argument) but rather that he had not shown he would face any very significant obstacles. That is not inconsistent with accepting at [22] that LGBTQI+ persons faced significant obstacles. Nor is the judge’s finding that there were no reasons why the appellant could not operate in Georgia on a day-to-day basis inconsistent, the judge having rejected the appellant’s asylum and Article 3 claims and given all of the other factors identified in [33].

22. The judge did not focus solely on the appellant’s Article 3 claim. Again, the decision must be read as a whole and the judge’s findings on the appellant’s protection claim cannot be disregarded when reading his Article 8 analysis. That is particularly the case given that the judge expressly refers back in [33] to his protection findings.

23. The grounds amount to disagreement with the judge’s plainly permissible findings and disclose no error of law.

Notice of Decision

1. The appeal is dismissed.
2. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error of law and stands undisturbed.

Sean O’Brien

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

29 May 2026