LHR to appeal ‘shocking’ asylum seekers ruling

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has described the decision by the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to dismiss an application by eight Somali asylum seekers to review their rejected applications as shocking. The LHR’s Wayne Ncube said the organisation intended to appeal the decision. ‘We feel it does not reflect the facts in the papers or take into consideration judicial precedence from superior courts or the prevailing country information from Somalia,’ he said. According to a Mail & Guardian Online report, LHR acted on behalf of the eight asylum seekers, who fled Somalia and came to SA at various times from 2007. Officials at the refugee reception offices declined all eight of their asylum applications. They appealed, but the Refugee Appeals Board (RAB) again denied them. In their appeal to the High Court, the applicants highlighted a number of errors in making their case, including that the RAB had a ‘restrictive interpretation’ of the term ‘persecution’. But Judge President Dunstan Mlambo dismissed the appeal suit.

In his judgment, Mlambo said it was ‘immediately apparent’ that the RAB had focused on when the asylum seekers were personally exposed to ‘conduct amounting to persecution’. ‘The RAB considered whether each of the asylum seekers was exposed to any personal threat or harm leaving them with no option but to flee Somalia ... (The RAB) considered the situation insofar as it related to each applicant. In this regard, the RAB considered if the asylum seekers had other family members living with them when they decided to leave Somalia,’ Mlambo said, according to the Mail & Guardian Online report. ‘The basis for this approach is clear. If the civil war was the reason for the asylum seekers to flee Somalia, clearly the violent circumstances presented by that armed conflict cannot be selective, everyone living in the affected area would have been under threat.’ On this basis, Mlambo agreed with the refugee reception offices and the RAB, and concluded that the eight asylum seekers’ lives were not threatened, nor would they be under threat should they return to Somalia. He said the criticism levelled against the RAB’s approach to the asylum seekers’ applications was misconceived and that there was no foundation for them to argue that the RAB had applied a restrictive interpretation of the term ‘persecution’.

Full Mail & Guardian Online report