Irish High Court finds claim that woman trafficked from Nigeria could ‘sustain herself’ through prostitution egregiously offensive to human dignity
A Nigerian-born woman, Ms I, has successfully obtained an order of certiorari in the High Court after being refused international protection by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (‘IPAT’).
In 2015, Ms I claimed international protection for two reasons. Firstly, Ms I had worked as a prostitute as a child victim of sexual abuse and she feared her family’s reaction if she was to return. Secondly, she was trafficked to Ireland and was in fear of the traffickers in Nigeria.
While the IPAT accepted that Ms I had been disowned by her family for her work as a prostitute, it did not find evidence to support Ms I’s claim that her family had attacked or targeted her. Moreover, the IPAT did not accept that Ms I faced any risk from traffickers as it did not believe that she had been trafficked to Ireland.
The High Court found that the IPAT unlawfully conflated M I’s fear of being persecuted by her family with her fear of being persecuted as a victim of trafficking. By focusing on the traffickers as the actors of persecution, the IPAT failed to fully consider the core element of her claim which was the risk from her extended family.
The Court rejected the IPAT’s ascertain that there was no obligation to assess Ms I’s extended family as actors of persecution as, according to Country of Origin Information, she was not at risk even where disowned by her family. This argument suggested that an applicant would need to have suffered past persecution or harm in order to trigger an obligation to assess future risk. The Court acknowledged the specific legal obligation set out in PD v The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to conduct an investigation where risk due to work as a prostitute is claimed. The Court was of the view that the IPAT had fundamentally not addressed the risk of future persecution connected to Ms I having acted as a prostitute.
The Court also rejected the IPAT’s claim the Ms I would be in a better position to resettle in Nigeria due to her ability to sustain herself through prostitution. The Court stated that it “is for Ms I to determine how she now chooses to live her life; however, the notion that Ireland would countenance the return of any woman (here a woman who is the accepted victim of child sexual abuse) to any country, by reference, inter alia, to the fact that once there she could return to prostitution to sustain herself is so egregiously offensive to the inherent and natural human dignity of women (and of men, were a sometime male prostitute to find himself similarly placed) that the IPAT’s reasoning in this regard cannot be permitted to, and, the court finds, does not have, any legal weight”.
The Court remitted the matter to the IPAT for fresh consideration.
Click here for the decision.