SA (Afghanistan) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 53
Related Member(s): Tamara Jaber
Related Practice Area(s): Immigration, Asylum and Free Movement, Human Rights
Court: Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
The Court of Appeal have dismissed the appellant’s appeal form a decision of the FTT, to refuse his claim for humanitarian protection and claims under Articles 2, 3 and 8 of the ECHR. The appellant is an Afghan national who arrived in the UK as a child, aged 14, in August 2009 and has remained here since then.
The Appellant argued that the FTT failed:
- properly to consider the weight that was to be given to the appellant’s private life, which developed while he was a child in this country, and that, in effect, no (or no sufficient) weight was given to that private life;
- to consider all the factors relevant to his integration in Afghanistan. These included the difficulty in sustaining a private and family life, in particular, in relation to his employment and educational prospects, as well as his physical and psychological integrity, against a background of growing up in this country since the age of 14;
- to address the serious threat to the appellant’s life from indiscriminate violence in the prevailing situation in Kabul as a result of internal armed conflict.
The judge rejected all three grounds of appeal, stating that each of the grounds has been properly considered by the FTT and that the appellant’s private life was not of such a quality as to weigh heavily in the deciding ‘the public interest question’. Furthermore, it was decided that whilst the appellant would undoubtedly face harsher conditions if returned to Kabul than he enjoyed in the UK, this is not a case in which the appellant is able to show that his personal circumstances (apart from his relative youth) render him specifically liable to indiscriminate violence. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.
Tamara Jaber was involved in this case.