Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001604
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/52767/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 23 June 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SAINI

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
and

MM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms N Nnamani, Yemets Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr M Parvar, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 12 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. For ease of comprehension, I shall refer to the parties as they were constituted before the First-tier Tribunal.
2. The Secretary of State appeals against the decision of First tier-Tribunal Judge Doyle, allowing the Appellant's Protection and Human Rights Appeal. The Secretary of State applied for permission to appeal, which was granted by First tier-Tribunal Judge Barker in the following terms:
“Ground 1 – membership of a particular group:
The Judge arguably failed to apply the correct law in relation to whether the appellant’s claim engaged the Refugee Convention, as she was a member of a particular social group. Whilst the Judge deals adequately with the first condition of section 33 of the 2022 Act, the Judge arguably fails to deal with, and/or provide adequate reasons for her findings in relation to the second condition.
Ground 2 – sufficiency of protection and internal relocation:
It is arguable that the Judge failed to provide adequate reasons for finding that protection was not available to the appellant from the authorities in Georgia. In particular, the Judge failed to provide any or adequate reasons as to why the protection previously provided, in the form of a Restraining Order, was no longer available to the appellant on return.
Furthermore, the Judge’s findings on internal relocation are arguably inadequate.”.
3. The Appellant did not provide a Rule 24 response but indicated that the appeal was opposed.
Preliminary Matters
4. There was controversy as to the scope of the Grounds of Appeal. The parties agreed that the Secretary of State had failed to challenge the Judge’s decision to allow the appeal under Article 8 or under the Rules in relation to Appendix Private Life. I agreed with this view as the Grounds of Appeal (as set out below do not demonstrate any challenge to these issues). For the sake of completeness, I affirm that the Appellant’s appeal remains allowed in relation to those two issues which arose in the appeal.
5. However, the parties were in disagreement as to whether the Grounds of Appeal, had explicitly challenged the Article 3 outcome. I shall address this at the outset of my decision before turning to the Grounds of Appeal as pleaded.
6. Bearing in mind the importance of the grounds to the extent of the appeal, having set out the grant of permission above (which also gave me a steer as to the scope of the appeal and my reasons below), I have also set out the Grounds of Appeal in full as pleaded by Pamela Hastings of the Respondent’s Specialist Appeals Team:
The Judge of the First-tier Tribunal has made a material error of law in the Determination.
1. Making a material misdirection of law on a material matter.
i. It is submitted that the Judge has found the appellant’s claim as a victim of domestic violence engages the refugee convention as a member of a Particular social group. It is submitted that the Judge’s reasoning is deeply flawed and one which fails to engage properly with s.33 NABA 2022.
ii. The Judge finds that as a victim of domestic violence, the appellant has an innate characteristic. Although the Respondent accepts that a victim of domestic violence could potentially be part of a PSG as a woman, the Judge has not applied the rigorous scrutiny necessary to form that view taking all the country information into account.
iii. In SA (Divorced woman – illegitimate child) Bangladesh CG [2011] UKUT 00254(IAC) at [74] requires each case to be determined on its own facts. The Judge has applied the facts in the most rudimentary way and found the appellant is in a social group because she is a member of her family. It is submitted that membership of a family on its own does not bring the appellant into a convention reason.
iv. It is further submitted that the Judge’s finding [13 (e)] that “The respondent says Georgian law is designed to protect female victims of domestic violence. If laws are written for female victims of domestic violence, they must be a group identified as different by surrounding society.” Is not a sustainable reason to conclude the appellant is a member of a PSG. The existence of laws to protect women and girls exists in many countries, including the UK, and emphasises the motivation of a country to address gender imbalance. It could not be said that a country which has no such laws is entirely without patriarchy as is implied in the Judge’s findings.
2. Failure to give reasons or adequate reasons on a material matter.
i. The Judge finds that there is no sufficiency of protection in Georgia, based on two cases from the ECHR. It is submitted that neither of these ECHR cases are asylum claims and neither deal with asylum and sufficiency of protection but instead concentrate on police failings. These are tortious claims and are of little support to the Judge’s findings, not least because each case deals with claims against the police which pre-date the reforms undertaken since the facts of those cases were established.
ii. It is further submitted that the Judge has given no substantive reason for finding there is no sufficiency of protection and has failed to consider the country information before him regarding both reforms and also of the actions taken by police to date. The appellant obtained a restraining order as detailed in the refusal letter. The judge has not addressed this at all.
iii. It is further submitted that the finding on internal relocation is brief and without proper consideration and does not attempt to address the country situation the appellant would meet should she attempt relocation.
Permission to appeal is respectfully sought.
An oral hearing is requested.
Scope of the Appeal
7. In relation to the scope of the appeal, the parties relied upon the judicial headnotes in Rai & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Grounds of Appeal - Limited Grant of Permission) [2025] UKUT 150 (IAC), in particular, paragraphs 3 and 4. I have set out paragraphs 2-4 which appear relevant and read as follows:
2. Whether a party is represented or not, they are required to identify the arguable errors of law in the grounds of appeal, adequately, so that the arguable error can be considered by a judge.
3. Each point of law, where there is more than one, must be clearly and succinctly identified as a numbered ground of appeal with sufficient detail so that the Tribunal and the parties are able to identify the essential issue raised by that ground. The grounds of appeal will rarely need to be lengthy. Each ground of appeal should identify succinctly, in clearly numbered paragraphs or (sub paragraphs):
a. The relevant passage(s) in the decision of the FtT.
b. Any relevant primary or secondary legislation only to the extent necessary to do so.
c. Any authority binding upon the judge that is capable of supporting the ground.
d. Brief submissions proving a short explanation to support the ground.
4. The Upper Tribunal is likely to take robust decisions and not permit grounds to be advanced if they have not been properly identified and pleaded, or where permission has not been granted to raise them.
8. In relation to the above judicial head notes, and contrasting those with the pleaded grounds of appeal, it is plain from the content of the legal argument that the Respondent was challenging the judge’s assessment of the Appellant’s protection claim, specifically the membership of a particular social group (in relation to Ground 1), followed by the issues of sufficiency of protection and internal relocation (in relation to Ground 2).
9. This accords with the grant of permission by Judge Barker which sets out the issues as headed and summarises the content of the grounds as she also understood them when considering whether or not to grant permission to appeal and the basis and nature of that grant.
10. Whilst the factual matrix of the protection claim forms the basis for the judge’s later Article 3 assessment, Rai makes clear that it is incumbent upon the party appealing the Tribunal’s decision to clearly and succinctly identify the essential issue raised by each ground of appeal, and the relevant passages of the judge’s decision that are impugned. My reading of the grounds of appeal is that they squarely challenge the assessment of the protection claim, but in no way challenge or even mention the judge’s Article 3 assessment or its outcome, whether by content or by paragraph reference. If the drafter of the grounds intended to take a belt and braces approach, it was certainly not apparent from the pleaded argument. This could have been easily done by adding a further sentence, ideally under a separate heading or ground of appeal, but it was not.
11. As stated in the fourth head note of Rai, the Upper Tribunal must take robust decisions and not permit grounds to be advanced if they have not been properly identified and pleaded or where permission has not been granted to raise them. In the instant matter, I cannot see that any challenge to Article 3 was properly identified and pleaded, and in addition, Mr Parvar did not make any application to me for permission to raise any challenge to Article 3 out of time.
12. Therefore, as identified above, the grounds before me concern challenges to the Appellant’s membership of a particular social group (in relation to Ground 1), and the sufficiency of protection and viability of internal relocation available in Georgia (in relation to Ground 2). I now turn to those grounds of appeal.
Findings
13. At the close of the hearing, I reserved my decision, which I shall now give. I do not find that there is an error of law in the decision, such that it should be set aside. My reasons for so finding are as follows.
14. In relation to the Ground 1, the chief complaint is that the judge materially erred in law by failing to properly consider section 33 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (“the 2022 Act”). I shall set out section 33(2) to 33(4) in full so that the legislative context is clear in how to approach assessment of whether a person is a member of a particular social group (“PSG”):
(2) A group forms a particular social group for the purposes of Article 1(A)(2) of the Refugee Convention only if it meets both of the following conditions.
(3) The first condition is that members of the group share—
(a) an innate characteristic,
(b) a common background that cannot be changed, or
(c) a characteristic or belief that is so fundamental to identity or conscience that a person should not be forced to renounce it.
(4) The second condition is that the group has a distinct identity in the relevant country because it is perceived as being different by the surrounding society.
15. As noted by Judge Barker in granting permission to appeal, it is apparent that the Judge has directed their attention to the first condition of section 33(3). Mr Parvar did not attempt to persuade me otherwise but stated that the second condition was not lawfully assessed. It is apparent from paragraphs 13(c) to 13(f) that the judge was plainly aware of the conjunctive, two condition approach required under section 33 as the statute is laid out by him in terms. I pause to note that paragraph 7 of the Secretary of State’s Refusal Letter explicitly concedes that the facts of the Appellant’s protection claim are accepted and are not in dispute. This was an extraordinary concession as it has had a far-reaching impact upon the assessment of her protection claim. Based on this, and the objective evidence before him that was jointly-relied upon, the judge found that the Appellant has “a distinct identity in Georgia as a woman in a patriarchal society with an unchangeable background as an accepted victim of Domestic Violence”. Thus far, the Judge appears to be applying the accepted facts to the first statutory condition within section 33.
16. Going through the findings in paragraph 13, the Judge then cites the Respondent’s position that “Georgian law is designed to protect female victims of domestic violence”. The controversy arises from the Judge’s finding that “(i)f laws are written for female victims of domestic violence, they must be a group identified as different by surrounding society”. The Respondent’s grounds argue that this is “not a sustainable reason” to conclude the appellant is a member of a PSG because laws protecting women and girls exist in many countries, including the UK, and this demonstrates the state is motivated to address ‘gender imbalance’. It is then said that “(i)t could not be said that a country which has no such laws is entirely without patriarchy as is implied in the Judge’s findings”. As an aside, and ignoring the double negative, I think the drafter of the grounds is trying to argue that if a country has such laws, it is not patriarchal, as opposed to the being a patriarchal society. As a further aside, I do not believe the grounds are correct in asserting that the UK only affords protection to female (not male) victims of domestic violence in the way that Georgia has done in order to address this widespread concern, not least because the Grounds of Appeal do not cite which UK legislation the Respondent has in mind and in any event, as far as I am aware, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the Serious Crime Act 2015 are couched in neutral terms that make reference to victims as victims without reference being made to one specific gender. In any event, in my view the Respondent’s argument is also plainly argumentative and an attempt to reargue the appeal. It does not demonstrate that the judge’s reliance upon Georgian legislation was so perverse that no rational judge could have considered the legislation as this judge has done and that the conclusions drawn were not open to the judge to make. In addition, the Respondent forgets that notable societies that the Tribunal has seen may very well pass laws that purport to give protection to minority communities or groups (such as protecting female victims of domestic violence, or members of a religious minority residing in an allegedly secular state), but those laws have not been applied in practice, as found by the judge, which has not been challenged or contradicted by way of rebuttal evidence filed under Rule 15(2A), for example. Therefore, this argument does not point to a material error of law.
17. In any event, the Respondent’s submission that how the judge came to consider that female victims of domestic violence were a PSG was unlawful, contradicts the judgment of SSHD v. K and Fornah v SSHD [2006] UKHL 46 wherein Lord Bingham formulated the relevant principles on this matter at [13] which the judge appears to have followed. Those principles read as follows:
“Certain important points of principle relevant to these appeals are to be derived from the opinions of the House. First, the Convention is concerned not with all cases of persecution but with persecution which is based on discrimination, the making of distinctions which principles of fundamental human rights regard as inconsistent with the right of every human being: pp 651, 656. Secondly, to identify a social group one must first identify the society of which it forms part; a particular social group may be recognisable as such in one country but not in another: pp 652, 657. Thirdly, a social group need not be cohesive to be recognised as such: pp 643, 651, 657. Fourthly, applying Applicant A v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (1997) 190 CLR 225, 263, there can only be a particular social group if it exists independently of the persecution to which it is subject: pp 639-640, 656-657, 658.”
18. From the above, it is apparent that a particular social group “may be recognisable as such in one country but not in another”. I find that this is directly relevant to the Respondent’s argumentative ground that attempts to analogise the treatment of female victims of domestic violence with that of the United Kingdom. In short, the fact that there is protection afforded to female victims of domestic violence in the UK is not automatically analogous to that in Georgia because similar laws exist there and in any event this ignores the requirement that it is society’s view of the PSG that matters, not that of the Secretary of State. As to noting the relevant society’s view of the PSG, the judge refers to Georgia having a “patriarchal” society which is the starting point identified by Lord Bingham’s comment that “to identify a social group one must first identify the society of which it forms part”.
19. I have also considered the Upper Tribunal’s reported decision of EMAP (Gang violence, Convention Reason) [2022] UKUT 335 (IAC) at [90]-[111] which considers section 33 of the 2002 Act. In particular, [98]-[105] raises key principles concerning the “social perception” limb of section 33 which mirrors the language of Article 10 of the Refugee Convention. I thus refer to the following principles from those paragraphs explicitly: “(t)he first point to note is that any proposed particular social group must be assessed in the context of the society in which it is said to exist. Groups regarded as having social visibility in one country may not do so in another” and “(t)he second point is that a group that makes out its claim to ‘social visibility’ by pointing to the discrimination it faces will not necessarily fall foul of the principle that the group cannot be defined by reference to the feared persecution… It can even, with some care, be said that the persecution itself may give rise to the social visibility of a certain group within society…”and ”(t)his leads to the final, and for the purpose of such cases, perhaps the most important point about social visibility. The group does not need to be perceived as different by society as a whole. It certainly can be - eg women in Pakistan - but in practice the perception need only be held by some members of the society. It is today uncontroversial that members of a family can constitute a particular social group, and that they would (absent special notoriety or fame) only be perceived as being part of that group by the immediate community in which they live.”
20. It is with the above principles firmly in mind that I note and consider the Judge’s finding that legislation has been drafted to protect female victims of domestic violence in Georgia. Does this mean that ‘female victims of domestic violence’ have a distinct identity in Georgia because they are perceived as being different by the surrounding society? To my mind, applying the above-identified EMAP principles, it does. For example, the legislation does not pertain to male victims of domestic violence or victims or domestic violence as a whole. It is gender-specific. This was clearly a group of discernible victims of sufficient concern to warrant Georgian legislation being brought into effect to protect them. That plainly means they are perceived as being different by surrounding society and certainly by the state, to the extent that this specific group required protection over and above that afforded by normal criminal law. Thus, I find there is no legal error, nor perversity in the Judge’s finding that “(i)f laws are written for female victims of domestic violence, they must be a group identified as different by surrounding society”.
21. The grounds next complain that the Judge has found the Appellant is a member of a PSG “because she is a member of her family” and “membership of a family on its own” cannot assist the Appellant. Although the Judge notes the agent of persecution is the Appellant’s husband, as already noted above, that the Appellant is his wife is not the sole basis upon which the Judge found the Appellant to be a member of a PSG. This merely was a nuance of her membership of a PSG, namely a female victim of domestic violence as broadly perceived in Georgian society. Indeed, her being the wife of, or directly related to, the perpetrator closely aligns with the archetypal victim of domestic violence, rather than detract from it. In any event, the fact that a family can be regarded as a PSG was noted by Lord Bingham at [61] of Fornah wherein he approved the judgment of Clarke, LJ in K & Anor v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 986 and noted that “…a family can be a particular social group for the purposes of the Convention”. Here, the Judge went much further than finding the PSG was merely being the perpetrator’s wife.
22. Thus, in light of the above, I do not find that Ground 1 discloses any error of law.
23. Turning to Ground 2, the grounds begin by noting that the Judge’s finding of in sufficiency of protection is based on two cases at §13(o) and 13(p), namely Tkhelidze v. Georgia, App no. 33059/17 [2021] ECHR 614 and Oghlishvli v. Georgia - 7621/19 [2024] ECHR 603. The grounds first argue that neither of these cases are “asylum claims” and neither deal with “asylum and sufficiency of protection” but instead concentrate on police failings and are “of little support to the Judge’s findings”. This argument is, at its heart, a disagreement over the judge’s apportionment of weight. Thus, it is crucial to see what material was before the Judge to discern whether the apportionment of weight was open to him, or not. Mr Parvar highlighted that the Respondent had solely relied upon (a) the 2022 US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Georgia; and (b) the 2022 Human Rights Centre’s Report on the State of Human Rights in Georgia (i.e. the Respondent had only relied upon the objective evidence cited in the Refusal but nothing more). As an aside, the Appellant also relied upon the same US Country Report and cited passages from it in her Appeal Skeleton Argument. When I queried with Mr Parvar whether there was any passage or evidence within the Respondent’s objective evidence that the judge had failed to consider (even though this point was not taken in the grounds), Mr Parvar did not point to any omission whatsoever. In fact, the Judge refers to the evidence relied upon by the parties at §13(m) and even cites a passage from the US Country Report at §13(n) as follows: “According to GYLA, sexual violence remained one of the most serious, most hidden, and unpunished forms of gender-based violence. Current legislation and practice failed to provide effective, survivor-centered, gender-sensitive legal solutions to combat sexual violence. For women and girls experiencing violence, justice was unavailable or difficult to access. Despite the existing challenges, GYLA reported the detection of sexual violence cases and the detection rate of registered crimes increased compared with previous years”. Thus, it is apparent that the judge took the objective evidence into account and indeed noted the societal view on this PSG and the failings of the state in protecting them. Was it prohibited for the judge to refer to these two authorities? No, it was not. The judge did not elevate those authorities to any status that demonstrated he considered them binding or determinative of the issue, and if anything, their placement within the decision demonstrates that they merely supported the judge’s view of the objective evidence, namely that this PSG was not being sufficiently protected by the state.
24. At their highest, the authorities established that Georgia has “a patriarchal society with inadequate protection for victims of domestic violence” (Tkhelidze v. Georgia) and that a victim had died following domestic violence as “no meaningful protection was offered by the state” and the court was “critical” of the state’s failure to display “diligence and vigour when investigating a case involving violence against women” which ”could be read as sheer unwillingness to establish the truth” (Oghlishvli v. Georgia). It was plainly open to the Judge to note those findings as they inform the subject of sufficiency of protection and paint a bleak picture of the Georgian state in the eyes of another court which the judge was guided by. Would the judge have found otherwise had those judgments not been considered? I do not believe so, as nothing which pointed to any other outcome was pointed to or advanced by the Respondent as being previously relied upon by her but omitted from consideration by the judge. Thus, there is no merit to the submission that the judge “failed to consider the country information before him regarding both reforms and also of the actions taken by police to date” as Mr Parvar was not able to point to any material omitted from the Judge’s consideration.
25. As to the fact that the Appellant obtained a restraining order as detailed in the Refusal Letter and the complaint that the judge has not addressed this at all, notwithstanding the objective evidence referred to by the judge, it is noteworthy that the Restraining Order was only issued on 12 April 2024 – after the Appellant entered the UK. Thus, the Appellant was already beyond the husband’s reach when this was obtained. Thus, had it been explicitly considered, I do not find that this would have made any difference to the outcome as the Restraining Order was a function to restrain the husband but such an Order could not logically demonstrate, nor guarantee, that the husband would abide by it, nor that it would have had any impact upon the insufficiency of protection that the objective material already pointed to and which the judge found was unavailable to the Appellant.
26. Finally, it is argued that the finding on internal relocation is brief and does not attempt to address the country situation the appellant would meet should she attempt relocation. Albeit brief, the finding is based on the context of the husband being from a large Kurdish family and the accepted background that he had connections, friends, family and contacts in Georgia and beyond. This is why the Judge found that internal relocation “has already been tried and proved to be ineffective”. This finding was open to the judge to make and no evidence has been pointed to which could have inexorably led the judge to a different conclusion nor demonstrated that the finding was perverse.
27. In light of the above findings, I find that there is no merit in the grounds. The decision is free from legal error.
Notice of Decision
28. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.
29. The appeal to the Upper Tribunal is dismissed.

P. Saini

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

15 June 2026