Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-000609
UI-2026-000610
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/64753/2024
PA/64757/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

19th of October 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE HIRST

Between

(1) AE
(2) LI
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellants
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: No appearance
For the Respondent: Ms Keerthy, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 15 October 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the Appellants are granted anonymity. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the Appellants, likely to lead members of the public to identify them. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Appellants appeal from the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dated 7 November 2025 dismissing their appeals on protection and human rights grounds. Permission to appeal was granted by the Upper Tribunal on 27 April 2026.
2. For the reasons set out below, I have decided that the First-tier Tribunal’s decision did not involve the making of a material error of law and I decline to set the decision aside. The Appellants’ appeals are dismissed.
Background
3. The Appellants are citizens of Bangladesh. The Second Appellant is the minor child of the First Appellant and a dependent on her claim. The First Appellant is referred to in this decision as ‘the Appellant’.
4. The Appellant arrived in the UK on 30 September 2022 on a student visa and claimed asylum on 15 November 2022. The basis of the Appellant’s claim was that she had been threatened by an individual named Nazmul Hussain, a local Awami League leader, for refusing to enter into a forced marriage with his son.
5. The Appellant’s asylum claim was refused on 2 May 2024. The Respondent accepted that the Appellant had been threatened by Nazmul Hussain, but did not accept that he had sufficient profile or power to pose a risk to the Appellant outside her home area. The Respondent held that the Appellant could obtain sufficient protection from the Bangladeshi authorities and/or that she could relocate within Bangladesh to avoid the risk.
6. The Appellant’s appeal came before the First-tier Tribunal on 27 October 2025. The First-tier Tribunal judge noted that the Awami League government had fallen in August 2024 and an interim government was now in power. The judge concluded (§46-47) that whilst Nazmul Hussain and his son might well have residual influence over the local police, there was no evidence to suggest they had influence outside of their local area and internal relocation was available. She also concluded that the Appellant could obtain sufficient protection from the authorities. The judge dismissed the appeal on asylum and human rights grounds.
7. The Appellant appealed. Permission was granted on limited grounds on 27 April 2026.
The error of law hearing
8. The Appellant is represented by GigaLegal Solicitors (‘GigaLegal’). Notice of the error of law hearing was sent to the solicitors on 24 September 2026. On 29 September 2026 GigaLegal applied to adjourn the hearing on the basis that the Appellant could not meet the fees for representation at the hearing. The request was refused on 1 October 2026. An extension of time was granted to file the hearing bundle.
9. On 29 September 2026 GigaLegal made a second adjournment application on the same basis. Before a decision was made on that application, GigaLegal emailed the Upper Tribunal on 6 October 2026 advising the Tribunal that the Appellant would not be legally represented at the error of law hearing due to a lack of funds. The email stated
“The Appellant has requested that the matter proceed in the absence of legal representation and that the Tribunal determine the appeal on the basis of the evidence and materials currently before it…”
GigaLegal later confirmed that they were still acting for the Appellant.
10. The Appellant did not appear at the hearing on 15 October 2026 and I asked the Tribunal clerk to contact GigaLegal to confirm whether she would attend. GigaLegal confirmed by email on that the Appellant wished for the matter to be determined on the papers. The email stated
“Please note that we have previously informed the tribunal that the Appellant wishes for the matter to proceed on papers as they are unable to hire counsel due to financial constraints…”
11. A request that a hearing proceed in the absence of legal representation (the request made by GigaLegal in the email of 6 October 2026) is not the same as a request that the matter be determined in the absence of the Appellant. Appellants are frequently unrepresented before the Upper Tribunal and the lack of legal representation does not mean that an unrepresented appellant cannot participate in the hearing or make submissions on their own appeal.
12. However, on the basis of the second email from GigaLegal, I was satisfied that the Appellant did not in fact wish to attend the hearing or to make submissions. I was also satisfied that no unfairness resulted from proceeding in the Appellant’s absence. Accordingly, the hearing proceeded in the absence of the Appellant and on the basis of submissions from Ms Keerthy on behalf of the Respondent.
13. Ms Keerthy relied on the Respondent’s Rule 24 response dated 30 April 2026. She submitted, in summary, that the judge’s conclusions were open to her on the evidence, including the expert report, and that there was no material error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision.
Discussion and decision
14. Permission to appeal was granted only on Ground 1, which was that the First-tier Tribunal judge erred in law by conducting a selective assessment of an expert report by Md Solaiman Tushar. The Appellant’s grounds of appeal contend that the First-tier Tribunal judge had failed to consider the report in the round or to engage with key aspects of the report; in particular, the judge did not engage with the sections of the report (at §17-24 and §35-36) that addressed why the Appellant would be at risk throughout Bangladesh and the lack of effective state support to victims of gender-based violence.
15. The First-tier Tribunal judge addressed the report briefly at paragraphs 44-45 of the decision, where she stated:
“44. I have had regard to the expert’s report but find that it does not assist me a great deal. As the respondent notes in her review, the report does note that those who assault women are arrested and brought before the courts, which demonstrates that there is a legal system available which offers protection to women at risk of gender-based violence. The report at paragraph 23 states that the circumstances suggest that an individual refusing the marriage proposal of the son of a powerful political figure could face significant threats to her safety even if she relocated. There is no evidence that Nazmul is a powerful political figure outside of Gopalganj.
45. The report considers that the state protection which is available, is limited. Sufficiency of protection can never be absolute and is never meant to be absolute. What is required is a reasonable level of protection as per AW([2011] UKUT31(IAC)) which, at headnotes 1-3 states ‘At paragraph 55 of Auld LJ’s summary in Bagdanavicius [2005] EWCA Civ.1605 it is made clear that the test set out in Horvath [2001] 1 AC 489 was intended to deal with the ability of a state to afford protection to the generality of its citizens. But the report does acknowledge that there is protection available to the appellant. The case of RT ([2012] UKSC 38) requires that the appellant show that the state is unable or unwilling to offer effective protection and she has not shown that.”
16. As with any evidence, the weight to be attached to the expert report was pre-eminently a matter for the First-tier Tribunal judge: Volpi v Volpi [2022] WLR(D) 173 at §2. In this case, I consider that whilst the judge could have given more detailed reasons at paragraphs 44-45, there was no error of law in her treatment of the report or her conclusion that the report did not assist her greatly in determining the appeal.
17. I have considered the expert report carefully and in its entirety. I note that in a recent decision (SU (Expert reports – format) [2026] UKUT 00317 at §60) the Upper Tribunal made specific criticisms of another expert report by Md Solaiman Tushar. Many of those criticisms also apply to the report produced in this case. For example, much of the report in this case consisted of sections cut and pasted from cited sources but without quotations, giving the false impression that the expert was the writer of the material; many of the sources given were press articles without direct reference to the studies or reports cited in the articles; the report did not refer to, or engage with, the relevant Country Policy and Information Note (‘CPIN’); and much of the report was at best only tangentially relevant to the Appellant’s individual situation. The overall quality of the report was poor.
18. Paragraphs 18-24 of the report addressed the question of internal relocation, and the following section of the report (paragraphs 25-38) addressed the issue of sufficiency of protection. In relation to the issue of internal relocation, the report’s conclusion (at paragraphs 23-24) that the Appellant was at risk anywhere in Bangladesh was contingent on Nazmul Hussain being a “powerful political figure”. As the judge noted at paragraph 44 of her decision, there was no evidence before her that Nazmul Hussain was in fact a powerful political figure whose influence extended beyond the local area. The expert report did not address that issue at all, but simply took for granted that Nazmul Hussain was a figure with national reach. Nor did the report address the situation following the fall of the Awami League regime; on the contrary, paragraph 24 referred to “an extensive network of ruling party officials and activists throughout Bangladesh”. As the expert report did not explain how or why Nazmul Hussain had influence beyond the local area, nor address the changed political situation, the judge was plainly entitled to conclude that the evidence before her did not demonstrate that the Appellant could not internally relocate.
19. It is important to note that the Appellant’s claim was not that she was at risk of violence from her husband, or that she feared persecution in general as a woman in Bangladesh; her claim was focused on the threat of harm from Nazmul Hussain and/or his son. The conclusion that internal relocation was viable for the Appellant was therefore determinative of the appeal, since the question of whether the Bangladeshi authorities were able and willing to provide sufficient protection did not arise if the Appellant did not require protection in areas other than her home area.
20. I have however considered in any event whether the judge erred in her consideration of the expert report in relation to sufficiency of protection. Paragraphs 29-35 of the report consisted largely of sections cut and pasted (without quotation marks) from a UN article about intimate partner violence, an op-ed article about violence and discrimination against women, and a newspaper article from the Daily Star. The expert’s conclusion at paragraph 36 onwards that state protection against gender-based violence was in general limited was not supported adequately or at all by the sources cited or by any statistics on enforcement. The expert did not address the key question in the Appellant’s case, which was not whether she would be adequately protected from street harassment, discrimination or intimate partner violence, but whether she would be able to obtain sufficient protection against the specific threat from Nazmul Hussain. As the First-tier Tribunal judge noted, the report referred in several places to the arrest and/or imprisonment of individuals who had assaulted women, including the arrest of individuals linked to the Awami League (see, for example, paragraphs 6, 7, 9, 22, and 26 of the report). In the circumstances, there was no error in the judge’s reasoning or conclusion at paragraph 45 of the decision: she correctly directed herself as to the standard of protection which was required and her conclusion that adequate protection would be available was one which was open to her on the evidence including the expert report.
21. I therefore conclude that there was no material error of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s decision. The weight to be given to the expert report was a matter for the judge, who gave adequate reasons for her conclusions that internal relocation and sufficiency of protection were available.
22. I decline to set aside the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, with the result that the determination dismissing the Appellants’ appeals stands.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of a material error of law.
The Appellants’ appeals are dismissed.

L Hirst

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

16 October 2026