IAT Country guidance stands until it is replaced or found to be wrong in law. It will not be appropriate to grant an adjournment on the grounds that a party is seeking to challenge a relevant country guidance case in the higher courts.
Where a country guidance case is replaced because of changed country conditions or because further evidence has emerged, that will not mean that it was an error of law for an immigration judge to have followed it up to that point. Where, however, a country guidance case is found to be legally flawed the reasons for so finding will have existed both before and after its notification. It is a determination inconsistent with other authority that is binding on the Tribunal (see AIT Practice Directions 18.2) In those circumstances, which will be encountered only rarely, any determination of an appeal decided substantially on the basis of that country guidance will be legally flawed also and cannot stand.
AA (Involuntary returns to Zimbabwe) Zimbabwe [2005] UKAIT 00144 CG (‘AA(1)’) was found by the Court of Appeal in AA and LK [2006] EWCA Civ 401 to be legally flawed in its approach to the assessment of the evidence. Accordingly it must now be seen as never having been correct country guidance.
Although in AA and LK there was no challenge by the respondent to the Article 3 assessment reached in AA(1), that assessment was based on the same body of evidence considered in respect of the asylum grounds of appeal. AA(1)’s assessment of that evidence having been found legally flawed, it was no longer possible to support a finding of an Article 3 violation by reference to that assessment.
[2006] UKAIT 00077
Bailii
Immigration
Leading Case
Updated: 12 November 2021; Ref: scu.246953