UK - Upper Tribunal for Immigration and Asylum provides new country guidance on Angola and Cabinda

Date: 
Monday, October 6, 2014

The UK Upper Tribunal has overturned its country guidance in FP (Return – Cabinda – Non-Luandan) Angola CG [2003] UKIAT 00204 and has ruled that despite serious human rights violations occurring within Cabinda and affecting Cabindans, these abuses do not render all returnees to Angola or Cabinda to be at risk of serious harm, whether or not they are Cabindans [129].


The case, MB (Cabinda risk) (CG) [2014] UKUT 434 (IAC), concerned an Angolan citizen from the Cabinda enclave who claimed that if returned to Angola his personal involvement with the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) would lead to a real risk of inhumane treatment by the Angolan authorities. Supporting his claim the applicant reiterated many of the arguments presented in FP 2004 guidance where the UK Immigration Appeal Tribunal held that return to Angola for a Cabindan would entail hostile questioning and supposed affiliation with FLEC leading to “a very probably risk of human rights abuse”[25]. Nevertheless, the Upper Tribunal (UT) in the present case refused to accede to the claimant’s arguments submitting, instead, that the Angolan authorities do not presently equate being a Cabindan with being a member or supporter of FLEC [111.] 

Moreover, the UT asserted that FLEC does not currently operate at a level such as to represent a real threat to the Angolan authorities and that “the finding in FP that travel to Cabinda from Luanda is excluded as a practical possibility is no longer correct” [134]. According to the UT, in order to establish a real risk of harm there must exist a “situation of generalised violence or armed conflict at a very high level” and that the individual, “by reason of circumstances as they relate to him, must show that there is a reasonable likelihood he will come into contact with the authorities in a way that will result in his detention” [130]. This, according to the UT, was not the case for MB.


3 October 2014

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Keywords: 
Country of origin information
Real risk
Serious harm
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UK