Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003573
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/79284/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 8th of October 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LAY

Between

CM (Cameroon)
(Anonymity Order made)
Appellant
v

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
Appellant: Ms L Woods, Direct Access Counsel
Respondent: Ms A Everett, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 2 October 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the anonymity of the Appellant is maintained.

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 is a 34-year-old Cameroon national who entered the UK on a visa and claimed asylum on 11 March 2024 on the basis of risk from Anglophone separatists in his home area as well as from the government who he said would impute to him support for the separatists owing, amongst other factors, to a propaganda video to which he had been compelled to contribute.

2. The Respondent refused his claim in a decision dated 28 November 2024. He exercised his statutory right of appeal, which was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Thorne in a determination promulgated on 18 April 2026, following a hearing on 30 March 2026.

3. The Appellant sought permission to appeal. I was assured by Ms Woods that she had seen the original application for permission and the refusal, albeit these were not in the Composite Bundle. At page 10 of the bundle I had the four renewed grounds of appeal.

4. Upper Tribunal Judge Loughran granted permission on all grounds on 30 July 2026. Ground 1, as pleaded, argued that the FTJ “failed to give adequate and due consideration to the risk pertaining to the Appellant vis a vis his claim that he would be perceived as a supporter of the separatists” – in other words, the strand of his claim relating to risk from the government and his inability to relocate away from Anglophone areas where the FTJ had accepted he had faced persecution from separatists in the past. As Ms Woods recognised, this dovetailed neatly with Ground 4 which contended that the FTJ had failed to have regard to the Respondent’s own Country Policy Information Note (CPIN) of 2020 which “deals at some length with the issue of both state and non-state protection… although the report has been withdrawn and is 6 years old. It highlights that the risk hails from both state and non-state actors and that having paid a ransom to the separatists entails that the authorities will perceive such a person as being a separatist sympathiser” [CB: 10].

5. Ms Woods submitted that Grounds 2 and 3 were no longer relied upon. She stated that “I don’t think I can go behind the finding that the [documentary] evidence was not reliable” and that the logic of this position was that Grounds 2 and 3, which turned on the FTJ’s rejection of the state “summonses” and “Wanted Notice” etc., were longer pursued. The “documents” are itemised at paragraph 19 of the determination under challenge. Relatedly, UTJ Loughran, in granting permission, had also noted a concern that the FTT determination had made reference to applying Devaseelan at paragraph 27 but this was case not applicable given that there was no previous determination to which to have regard. Given that Grounds 2 & 3 were not pursued, this issue fell away – however, my view is that, reading the paragraph as a whole, this was a slip of the pen/keyboard since the entire passage makes perfect sense if Devaseelan is replaced by the case of Tanveer Ahmed, both being mainstays of FT determinations. Either way, the FTJ explicitly analysed the documents by reference to the evaluation of credibility and reached an adverse view.

Conclusions

6. Grounds 1 & 4 contended that the issue of risk from the Cameroon state was not rationally assessed and, as Ms Woods argued orally, there was country evidence in front of the FTJ to which regard ought to have been given.

7. That “country evidence” was limited. Indeed, to the extent that there was country evidence, it was acknowledged by Ms Woods that this was the Respondent’s Country Policy Information Note, “Cameroon: Actors of protection”, Version 1.0, dated December 2020, which was cited in the refusal letter [CB: 190], as well as footnotes to certain country reports elsewhere in the refusal letter [CB: 189] and “faulty hyperlinks” in a statement of the Appellant post-asylum interview. In essence, the Respondent relied on various sources for her conclusion that there would be no risk from the state (as distinct from the separatists), there would be sufficiency of protection and, moreover, internal relocation was reasonable.

8. I will address the CPIN first. This was withdrawn in the middle of 2024 (prior to the refusal letter dated 28 November 2024 and, in any event, well before the appeal hearing on 30 March 2026). No further iteration/Version 2.0 has ever been issued/published online. It seems to me that, since the Respondent herself relied upon it in the refusal letter, it was “on the table” in the appeal and, in any event, Ms Woods’ position was that it ought to have been since she submitted that it assisted the Appellant. As I made clear to the parties, I have therefore reviewed the CPIN (it is archived online) in order to glean whether any element can be said to have been ignored such that it led to a material error of law, as pleaded. In particular, Ground 4 contended that the issue of ransoms paid to separatists for release (leading to suspicion by the authorities towards Cameroon citizens from Anglophone areas) was contained within the CPIN but I could find nothing in the CPIN on that discrete matter. Ms Woods did not take me to any such section either.

9. For the avoidance of doubt, I also checked a further archived CPIN, “Cameroon: Internal relocation”, Version 1.0, December 2020 because it was referenced by Ms Woods in her skeleton argument (albeit I was not taken to any indication in the FTT papers that this CPIN was referenced at the hearing nor is it cited in the refusal letter).

10. More broadly, to the extent that persecution by the state is mentioned in the “actors of protection” CPIN, there is a section at 4.2.3 about an unfair trial process for separatist leaders, at 5.2.1 on “disappearances of suspected Anglophone separatists” amid the crisis of the civil war and general paragraphs on human rights abuses in the country. I also reviewed the footnoted country reports within the refusal letter, which included the 2023 US State Department report on Cameroon, which has one line on the practice of kidnapping for ransom by separatists. But there is no connecting thread to state accusations being made against Anglophones who have been kidnapped.

11. I have read Ms Woods’ skeleton argument closely. It is important to distinguish between evidence that was not in front of the FTJ (even indirectly) and evidence which can reasonably be said to have been in play. Much of Ms Woods’ skeleton related to evidence which she was seeking to admit post-facto for the purposes of establishing error of law (see paragraph 18 below when I address this quixotic application). For the moment, sticking to evidence that can be said to have been “in front” of the FTJ, at paragraphs 11 & 12 her skeleton she cites two reports which were themselves cited in the refusal letter. Ms Woods also submitted orally that the “policing law information report” at footnote 6 of the refusal letter ought to have been integrated into the FTJ’s reasoning to the extent that it showed the extent of human rights abuses by the Cameroon state and thus the lack of effective protection in general terms but also in the context of the civil war.

12. Ms Woods further submitted that there were “faulty hyperlinks” within the Appellant’s witness statement. The hyperlinks are in fact in a long document [CB: 119-130] which consists of the Appellant making corrections to this asylum interview. They seem to relate to a range of issues, focused mainly on human rights abuses in Cameroon. I say “seem” because they were not true/operative hyperlinks in the Composite Bundle provided by the Appellant for this hearing (the documents having been scanned) and so I read each “url” in order to glean a gist of subject-matter; but, in any event, Ms Woods did not specify which links it was being said had been ignored with a material effect on the determination.

13. I examined the Appeal Skeleton Argument dated 12 May 2025 by the Appellant’s former solicitors, relied upon at the hearing (the same firm provided advocacy in the FTT). It is two pages long and does not mention country evidence. I was not taken to any schedule of country evidence.

14. Ultimately, the thrust of Ms Wood’s position appeared to be that FTJ Thorne had not taken into account country evidence of the extent of state human rights abuses in Cameroon and that this had a material effect on the determination. That country evidence was, in the main, cited within the Respondent’s refusal letter, flowing from its CPIN.

15. In my view, FTJ Thorne grappled with the evidence presented to him and which formed the core of the appeal. He was not obliged to list every country evidence source cited in the Respondent’s own refusal letter (nor, in any event, has it been demonstrated that key evidence was materially missed). His determination adequately and rationally gives reasons for rejecting the Appellant’s contention that he was at risk from the Cameroon state authorities and, at paragraph 26, he further concluded that “there would be sufficiency of protection in the remaining 80% of the country outside of the Anglophone areas”. He is plainly aware of the country dynamics and the general climate in a detailed determination.

16. The FTJ throughout turns to the specifics of the Appellant’s claim. The Appellant himself no longer challenges the adverse findings relating to the reliability of the arrest/summons documents (paragraph 27) nor is there a challenge to the litany of findings made at paragraph 24, 25 & 27. Those were as follows:

24 I do not accept A’s claim to be at risk of persecution from the state in Cameroon. A was able to safely leave Cameroon through an international airport in 2019 using his own passport when he travelled to Northern Cyprus, and he was then able to return to Cameroon in September 2023 using his own passport unhindered by the authorities. He was then able to exit the country again in March 2024 through an international airport using his own passport to travel to the UK. I agree with the submissions of R that this demonstrates that he is of no interest to the authorities.

25 Moreover A’s claim that during the period between September 2023 and March 2024 he was arrested and detained for 44 days by the authorities, during which time he was tortured, is not credible because none of this important claim was raised by A in his initial WS. In addition A was specifically asked at Q81 of the AIR how we able to maintain safety between October 2023 and March 2024 and he made no reference to this claimed 44 days of detention…. This severely damages the credibility of A’s account.

26 In addition A has demonstrated that he was willing to seek protection from the police after each incident of kidnapping. I note that A criticises the lack of response but I agree with R that the extent of the control of the separatists in Bamenda may have impacted on the police’s ability and willingness to assist the A. I conclude that there would be sufficiency of protection in the remaining 80% of the country outside of the Anglophone areas…

17. There was a suggestion made during the error of law hearing that the FTJ ought to have read more widely into Cameroon country evidence lying outside of that which was in the appeal bundles. This is not a sustainable submission and flies in the face of AL v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWCA Civ 370 and Lata (FTT: principal controversial issues) [2023] UKUT 00163.

18. Relatedly, Ms Woods also made an application (in writing and articulated orally) for the late admission of additional country evidence in order to throw light back on what ought to have been looked at by the FTJ had it been placed in front of the FTT at the time by the former legal representatives. Part B of the Composite Bundle had numerous items of additional country evidence which Ms Woods wished to be admitted retrospectively for the purposes of establishing error of law. Of course, there are certain (narrow) circumstances where post-FTT hearing evidence can be admitted, per E v Secretary of State for Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 49, including to establish procedural unfairness. I am wholly unpersuaded that this would be justified here. The Appellant was represented at the FT hearing and the necessary issues were ventilated.

19. Finally, Ms Woods also sought to argue that there would be risk on return to the Appellant as a failed asylum-seeker. This was neither pursued as an issue in the FTT nor evidenced at the time. It was another example of Ms Woods, not unadmirably, seeking to re-argue a different/ “better” case than that which was pursued below. However, it necessarily lay outside the confines of an error of law hearing.

Notice of Decision

The determination of the First-tier Tribunal is upheld and the Appellant’s appeal is dismissed.

Taimour Lay

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

6 October 2026