A young girl with “significant” special needs born in Ireland after her pregnant Nigerian mother claimed she came here due to fears her unborn child might be subjected to female genital mutilation or human sacrifice has won her legal challenge to being refused refugee status.
The application by the girl (10) must be reconsidered by a different member of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in light of the court’s findings, Ms Justice Mary Faherty directed.
The RAT’s finding the mother’s claim about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) ran “counter to generally known facts” did not meet the legal test of rationality or cogency set out in a 2011 High Court decision concerning FGM which was, “regrettably, a fact of life” for 19 per cent of females in Nigeria, the High Court judge held.
The girl’s developmental difficulties, and alleged difficulties she would face if relocated in Nigeria, were a “real” issue not considered by the RAT in accordance with the 2006 EC (Eligibility for Protection) Regulations, she also found.
It was “incumbent” on the RAT to analyse and consider whether medical reports disclosed development delays or disabilities at such a level it would impede the girl’s relocation within Nigeria, she said.
The child’s personal circumstances merited careful enquiry before a decision was made she could be internally relocated and the failure to do so rendered unlawful the manner in which internal relocation was considered, she ruled.
The girl’s mother came here in March 2005, days before her daughter was born, and was refused refugee status. In 2007, she sought asylum for the girl on grounds including fear the child might be subject to FGM and possible kidnapping and trafficking. The mother said she also feared it might be sought to sacrifice her daughter to appease the ghost of the child’s paternal grandfather, a pagan chief priest whose death was deemed by an “oracle” to have beeen caused by his son’s refusal to take on the role of chief priest.
Ms Justice Faherty said the RAT refused refugee status for the child on grounds of failure to establish a well-founded fear of persecution for a reason set out in the Refugee Convention. Any fear of persecution could be addressed by internal relocation within Nigeria, the RAT found.
The “succinct” RAT decision was not sufficiently “clear and reasoned” as it was open to question whether it was a credibility decision “pure and simple”, a decision on internal relocation, or a mixture of both, the judge said.
Earlier, the judge noted the girl’s mother had aid she is from Anambra state in Nigeria while the girl’s father was a Chrisian from Imo state whose own father was a pagan chief priest of a particular shrine in Imo state.
It was claimed the girl’s father came under pressure to marry his widowed sister in law but refused and instead married the girl’s mother who became pregnant by him in 2004. After the girl’s paternal grandfather died suddenly, the mother claimed his family consulted an “oracle”, a wooden object, which decreed the death arose from the girl’s father’s refusal to take on the role of chief priest and demanded sacrifice of the woman’s unborn child to the land to appease the “curse”.
The mother claimed this lead to her running away to save her child’s life, the judge said. The RAT previously found these claims did not amount to a well founded fear of persecution by her in-laws entitling the woman to refugee status.
