New Zealand Case Law: Decisions & Judgments

Topic

Refugee status determination

Legal area

Court

26 Aug 2022

LN (INDIA) v A REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2022] NZHC 2142

Citation

[2022] NZHC 2142
Court

High Court

The Court refused leave to appeal and leave to bring judicial review because the alleged factual errors were either not made or not material to the Tribunal's outcome, the weight and credibility assessments (including adverse findings about the alleged 2019 abduction and witness evidence) were within the Tribunal's discretion and open on the evidence, interpreter inaccuracies were minor and not shown to be clearly decisive, and the applicant failed to demonstrate a question of law of general or public importance or other reason justifying leave; the interim stay was lifted and costs reserved.
7 Apr 2022

REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER v BA (NIGERIA) [2022] NZHC 706

Citation

[2022] NZHC 706
Court

High Court

The High Court dismissed the Crown's appeal, holding the Tribunal did not err in law by nominating Lagos as a manageable, representative site for IPA assessment and stopping after finding Lagos unsafe due to COVID-19 given the nationwide nature of the pandemic and evidence of appreciable risk elsewhere; the Tribunal acted within its broad discretion and was not required to sequentially assess every alternative location in Nigeria.
11 Oct 2021

DY (PAKISTAN) v REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2021] NZCA 522

Citation

[2021] NZCA 522
Court

Court of Appeal

Leave to appeal and leave to bring judicial review were declined because although an arguable legal question was identified about the analytical approach, the IPT and High Court robustly examined the evidence, the credibility findings were open to the Tribunal on the facts, and there was no real prospect that adopting the alternative approach urged by the applicant would have produced a different outcome; the issues were not of sufficient general or public importance to warrant High Court consideration.
19 Feb 2020

AP (ETHIOPIA) v REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2020] NZHC 214

Citation

[2020] NZHC 214
Court

High Court

Costs were reduced to a modest sum ($750) because the applicant's undisputed impecuniosity and the public interest in not discouraging challenges to refugee and protected person determinations justified displacing the normal presumption under r 15.23 and exercising the Court's discretion under r 14.1 to reduce costs.
11 Jun 2018

H (CA580/2017) v REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2018] NZCA 188

Citation

[2018] NZCA 188
Court

Court of Appeal

Section 249 applies: the RPO's decision to determine the claim without interviewing the claimant is integrally linked to the RPO's final determination declining the claim and therefore falls within the scope of decisions the effect of which may be appealed to the Tribunal; judicial review is deferred until appeals are exhausted and leave is obtained thereafter.
20 Dec 2017

BP (SOUTH AFRICA) v REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2017] NZHC 3259

Citation

[2017] NZHC 3259
Court

High Court

The IPT's factual findings and the weight it assigned to country information were open to it on the evidence and did not disclose a seriously arguable question of law; the alleged errors were factual or matters of weight and did not meet the Taafi thresholds, therefore leave to appeal and leave to judicially review are refused.
12 Dec 2017

YLs (CA174/2017) v REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER [2017] NZCA 582

Citation

[2017] NZCA 582
Court

Court of Appeal

The Court held that the Immigration Act 2009 confines consideration of claimant good faith to the express statutory provisions (eg s134, s140) and does not permit a Tribunal to treat good faith as a mandatory consideration on appeals where the claim has been accepted for consideration; where the Act is silent the Tribunal must act consistently with the Refugee Convention, which does not permit considering an applicant's good faith as a bar to recognition; the High Court erred in importing the Lazarus (fraud unravels everything) principle to require a good faith inquiry in those circumstances.
22 Sept 2017

4d54a842-bf18-472e-8a0a-5e074e3462ca.pdf

Citation

openlaw-9e0b8099_7907_43ee_94f6_153b4c8563b0.pdf
Court

High Court

Costs were awarded to the Crown because the litigation primarily protected the applicant's private interests, the public interest/refugee context did not displace ordinary costs principles, no authority was cited to justify departure, and the applicant had not established grounds to decline costs; award set at 2B scale $14,272.
28 Oct 2016

REFUGEE AND PROTECTION OFFICER v CV AND CW & ANOR [2016] NZCA 520

Citation

[2016] NZCA 520
Court

Court of Appeal

The Court dismissed the Officer's appeal and upheld the High Court's remittal: the Tribunal erred in law by failing to assess properly whether compulsory military religious observance or penalties for refusal could amount to serious harm amounting to persecution linked to a Convention ground; the correct staged inquiry is (1) what will be the claimant's predicament on return, (2) is there a real chance of persecution, which requires identifying the right at issue, whether that right is breached (including lawfulness of any limitation), whether the breach will cause serious harm, whether the f…
16 Apr 2014

AHMED v IMMIGRATION AND PROTECTION TRIBUNAL [2014] NZHC 809

Citation

[2014] NZHC 809
Court

High Court

Section 432 of the Immigration Act 2009 preserved the applicability of the 1987 Act to persons subject to deportation orders made under the 1987 Act; therefore the applicant remained governed by the 1987 Act and could not bring a refugee or protected person claim under the 2009 Act, rendering the RSB decision void and the IPT without jurisdiction to hear the appeal.