Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-002011
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/67925/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

9th July 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE STAMP

Between

HM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation
For the Appellant: Ms A. Mughal, legal representative instructed by AMB Associates
For the Respondent: Ms A. Nolan, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 29 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

Background
1. The appellant appeals, with permission, the decision of the First-tier judge dated 1 February 2026 on the basis that it contains an error of law. The judge dismissed the appeal against the respondent’s refusal to grant her protection claim.
2. The appellant is a 37-year-old citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo (“DRC”) and has five dependent children.
3. The appellant claimed asylum on the basis of her husband’s political activity in that she fears the military intelligence services because her husband passed on information that was critical of the government to a journalist and the journalist disclosed that information publicly on the radio. Additionally, the appellant claimed that her Tutsi ethnicity would put her at risk on any return given the systematic discrimination that Tutsi’s had suffered for many years in the DRC.
4. The respondent refused the appellant’s asylum application on 13 December 2023 on the basis that she did not accept any of the material facts on which the asylum claim was based.
5. The judge dismissed the appeal. In relation to her husband’s political activity, he considered that her version of events was not credible, in particular that she had no knowledge of the nature of the information which had been disclosed by her husband to the journalist and which put her and her young family at risk. In relation to her Tutsi heritage, the judge, in absence of any reliable documentary evidence, concluded she had not satisfied the necessary burden of proof.
6. The appellant applied for permission to appeal on 13 February 2026 which was granted by First-tier judge Ritchie on 22 April 2026.
Preliminary Issues
7. There was no consolidated bundle filed with the court until 23 June which Ms Mughal explained was due to technical reasons and the bundle was not available to me for this hearing. Ms Mughal further explained that the documents had been submitted separately by email on 20 June which I was able to access on 26 June. I pointed out that those documents came to exactly 100 pages whereas the evidence before the First-tier Tribunal ran to 281. Ms Mughal confirmed that the entirety of the evidence on which the appellant wished to rely for the purposes of the appeal was contained in the e-mail filing.
8. Ms Nolan said that whilst she had not been served with the appellant’s consolidated bundle, she had access to all the necessary documents and was content to proceed.
9. AMB Advocates are reminded of the importance of compliance with Practice Directions of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers of the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal and, in particular, paragraph 8 relating to the contents of Trial Bundles and the need for timely filing and service on all relevant parties.
Submissions
10. Ms Mughal relied on her grounds of appeal. The first ground was that the judge had failed to properly consider the evidence of the appellant and her husband and his adverse inferences drawn from his conclusion on the appellant’s and her husband’s credibility were inadequately reasoned.
11. In particular, Ms Mughal submitted the judge’s findings at paragraph 22 that it was reasonable to expect the appellant to know the nature of the information disclosed her husband to the journalist were irrational. For the appellant to have known that information would put her at additional risk from attention from the authorities in the DRC.
12. The second ground is that the judge by requiring corroboration of the appellant’s Tutsi heritage made an error of law given her own evidence on the issue contrary to established authority.
13. Ms Nolan relied on her Rule 24 response and MN Vietnam v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 485 at paragraph 35 which requires an appellate court in reviewing a First-tier tribunal decision in this chamber to make a “straightforward down to earth reading” of the decision to identify whether there is room for genuine doubt over what had been decided rather than take an overly forensic approach and interpreting the decision as if it were a contract or statute.
14. The judge gave a clear account on why he had concluded that both the appellant and her husband’s evidence was not reliable and any claim that such a conclusion was irrational fell way below the high bar for this ground to be successful. The explanation that if the appellant had known about the information it would put her at greater risk does not explain her ignorance on the point up to the date of the hearing and given it was not put into evidence it could not be an error of law for the judge to fail to take it into account.
15. The judge made no error of law in requiring corroborating evidence of the appellant being Tutsi given such evidence was reasonably available.
Discussion and Decision
16. In light of the first ground relating to the judge’s view of the credibility of the appellant and her husband’s evidence my starting point is the observation made by the Court of Appeal in R (Iran) v the Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 982 at paragraph 8 that a tribunal would only “very rarely” be able to overturn a finding of fact based on oral evidence and the assessment of credibility. Additionality, the court held that for there to be an error of law on the basis that the decision was unreasonable or irrational it had to be such that no reasonable tribunal which addressed its mind to the issue could have come to the same conclusion. I also note the recent approach of the Court of Appeal in MN Vietnam referred to me by Ms Nolan.
17. Turning to the first ground the judge, at paragraphs 22, found that the appellant’s narrative lacked credibility as the “core part” of the claim was that her husband passed sensitive information to the journalist which brought the appellant to the government’s attention and yet she was entirely unaware of what the contents of that information. The judge found that it was not credible that she fled the DRC pregnant and with small children without having any understanding of the risk to her and her family before doing so.
18. Ms Mughal submitted that, given the respondent was not represented at the hearing, the judge did not have any opportunity to hear any cross examination of the appellant or her husband’s evidence and unfairly relied on the respondent’s refusal decision in coming to his decision failing to give proper weight to the appellant and her husband’s evidence. This submission is entirely without merit. The burden of proof is on the appellant to provide the necessary evidence to support her asylum claim. The purpose of cross examination is to test the evidence provided by the appellant rather than provide new evidence to support her claim. If the appellant wished to rely on additional evidence, it was up to her to present it to the judge. To suggest that the judge erred in basing his decision purely on the evidence before him runs contrary to common sense and amounts to no more than a disagreement with the judge’s conclusions.
19. Ms Mughal also submitted that the judge failed to give adequate reasons for his decision. Again, I find there is no merit in this submission. R (Iran) made it clear that for this ground to be successful I would have to find that it was not possible to understand the judge’s original thought process in coming to his conclusion on this issue. The judge made his reasoning abundantly clear in paragraphs 21 and 22 that he did not find the appellant’s lack of knowledge about the information which put her in danger as credible. He made a similar finding about her husband’s evidence, at paragraph 23, that he did not discuss the information with the appellant even after leaving the DRC as being credible. Similarly, at paragraphs 31 to 33 the judge explains his reasons for not accepting the appellant’s claims of Tutsi ethnicity in that no reliable evidence had been provided to support this other the appellant’s assertion and, in absence of any supporting documentation, he found the appellant had not discharged her burden of proof on this issue.
20. Ms Mughal further submitted that the judge’s determination at Paragraph 22 was irrational given that had the appellant known the details of the information passed on to her husband that would have been exacerbated the risk to her had she come to the adverse attention of the authorities in the DRC. Ms Mughal suggested that, relying on the chronology of events, there was no opportunity for the information to be discussed given the appellant fled to Angola and the appellant’s husband’s absence at the time.
21. I find that the chronology set out in her skeleton argument before the first tier lacks sufficient detail to support her submission but even so and assuming, for the sake of argument, I overlook Ms Nolan’s point that this explanation was not given to the judge as part of the appellant’s evidence, this submission fails to address the issue of the appellant’s lack of knowledge of the contents information which triggered her leaving the country after she was safely in the UK. Although the judge focussed on the lack of the appellant’s knowledge before making the decision to flee in paragraph 22 it was clearly in his mind when considering her credibility that even after the appellant was away from the DRC, she remained unaware of the information given his comments about her husband’s evidence in the following paragraph when he said:
“The husband’s evidence is that he did not discuss the information with the appellant even after she left the DRC Congo. I do not find this credible”
22. Accordingly, even if this explanation had been put into evidence it would not have resulted in a different outcome given it failed to address a critical issue which the judge considered as key in his finding that the appellant’s version of events lacked credibility. I find no error of law in relation to ground one.
23. Turning to ground two, Ms Mughal submitted that the judge erred by requiring unnecessary corroboration on the basis that there was no evidence to support her Tutsi ethnicity when the appellant’s own evidence could be treated as the necessary evidence. Additionally, the judge erred by making adverse credibility findings to the appellant’s lack of corroborating evidence.
24. It is clear that corroborative evidence is not a requirement for a successful protection claim. The ratio of MAH (Egypt) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA 216 is, however, that there is no legal requirement to produce corroborative evidence in circumstances where the appellant had already satisfied the relatively low standard of proof. The failure to produce such evidence could not then be used to undermine the appellant’s credibility (see paragraph 87). This was not the case here. The judge did not accept the unsubstantiated evidence of the appellant that she was Tutsi as demonstrated by her height and shape of her nose, by itself, met the low standard of proof. It was reasonable for him to require additional supporting information, such as a nationality document, identity card or family record given this should have been reasonably available to the appellant. Indeed, the appellant did provide some evidence being a death certificate for her sister but the judge did not accept the relevance or the provenance of this document given it been received from the appellant’s mother via WhatsApp and she did not keep the message chain and her mother could not provide it as she had changed her phone and lost her previous messages. Accordingly, I find no error of law in the judge requiring additional evidence to support the appellant’s claim of Tutsi ethnicity or him placing little weight on the evidence that was so provided.
25. In terms of the submission that the judge erred in finding that the appellant’s credibility was damaged in failing to provide corroborating evidence of her Tutsi ethnicity, I find no error of law given the judge considered that this evidence was reasonably available and particularly in circumstances where the evidence that was provided was unaccompanied by evidence of its authenticity which, again, should have been reasonably available.

Notice of Decision
For the reasons set out above, there are no errors of law in the decision of the First-tier Tribunal and I decline to set the decision aside.

Mark Stamp

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

1 July 2026