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Michael Oliver backed by House of Lords

Michael Oliver, sitting as an Immigration Judge on appeal from the Home Secretary's decision to refuse a Sierra Leonean woman asylum on the ground of her fear of enforced female genital mutilation on return was unanimously upheld by the House of Lords in Fornah v Home Secretary [2006] UKHL 46.

The Immigration and Asylum Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal had both allowed appeals against Michael's decision on the narrow ground that she did not qualify for refugee relief because she did not form part of a "particular social group" as required by the 1951 Refugee Convention if a person does not have a race, nationality or religion reason to qualify. Michael held that "young women in Sierra Leone" were such a group at risk of enforced circumcision.

The narrow argument was that since the circumcision was carried out by women who had already been mutilated the group could not be defined by a common thread independent of the persecution - as required under the Convention - since those already mutilated were outside that group, but Lord Bingham found that "women in Sierra Leone" were defined by their inferior position in society which resulted in the persecution; alternatively he would narrow the group to "intact women in Sierra Leone". Baroness Hale said that it was "blindingly obvious" that Miss Fornah qualified as a member of a particular social group.

1 December 2006

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