S.H.E. v. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal — High Court grants leave to amend judicial review grounds to challenge deportation order and grants interlocutory injunction, finding tribunal failed its inquisitorial duty regarding country of origin information and section 23 medical examination procedures

The Court’s Holding

Justice Siobhán Phelan granted leave to amend the Statement of Grounds to challenge both the deportation order and refoulement decision, and granted an interlocutory injunction restraining the applicant’s deportation pending determination of the proceedings. The court identified multiple substantive failures in the decision-making process.

First, the Tribunal failed to properly discharge its obligations under section 23 of the International Protection Act 2015. The court found that when the Tribunal rejected the request for a medical examination, it should have engaged with the applicant’s solicitors regarding why they had not obtained a report themselves—a question the Tribunal later used against the applicant as a negative credibility factor. The court noted that the Tribunal’s refusal to treat the s. 23 issue as a preliminary matter, combined with accelerated appeal timelines and structural difficulties in obtaining medical reports, meant the applicant faced a procedural trap.

Second, the court found the Tribunal breached its inquisitorial duty under section 61(3)(a) of the 2015 Act and shared duty under section 28 of the 2015 Act regarding country of origin information. Despite the applicant’s claim about anal examinations during military conscription, the Tribunal concluded this practice was unsupported by COI. However, the court noted that the UK Government Guidance “Country Policy and Information Note: Military Service, Egypt” (June 2025, updated March 2026) explicitly confirms that military medical examinations “include the infamous anal examination perceived to identify gay people.” This document was an openly accessible resource the Tribunal should have identified through its own COI inquiries. The court held the Tribunal should not have found the applicant’s claim was at variance with COI without discharging its investigative burden.

Third, the court noted the inexplicable failure to address the applicant’s visible facial scarring—evidenced in photographs but not referred to in any document during the assessment process—despite the applicant’s account of being burned with hot rods as part of the alleged abuse in Libya. Dr. Giller’s report confirmed that clinical evidence was “highly consistent” with the applicant’s account of trauma, including the presence of pale burn scarring still visible on the applicant’s face.

Key Takeaways

• Section 23 of the International Protection Act 2015 establishes a statutory mechanism for obtaining medical evidence in international protection claims; tribunal discretion to refuse such requests must be exercised with proper reasoning and cannot be based on assumptions about what applicants’ legal representatives could have done without investigation.
• Decision-makers have an affirmative inquisitorial duty to investigate and identify relevant country of origin information, particularly when core elements of a protection claim depend on specific practices in the country of origin—they cannot find claims “at variance with COI” without properly discharging that investigative burden.
• Physical evidence of trauma (scarring, visible injuries) corroborating an applicant’s account of abuse must be properly documented and considered in the assessment process, not overlooked or passed over without explanation.
• Medical evidence regarding mental health risks and psychological consistency with claimed trauma can be determinative in international protection and refoulement assessments, particularly where the applicant faces serious mental health risks upon forced return.
• Structural delays in obtaining medical reports (availability of practitioners, accelerated timelines) may justify tribunal-directed examination where private procurement is not feasible; refusal to address these practical barriers can render the statutory process nugatory.

Why It Matters

This judgment establishes important principles regarding the intersection of procedural fairness and substantive assessment in international protection law. It clarifies that while decision-makers have discretion to manage requests for medical examinations, they must exercise that discretion carefully and cannot use the applicant’s failure to obtain evidence as a credibility factor without first establishing why the statutory mechanism should not apply. The decision reiterates that the inquisitorial duty to investigate country of origin information is not merely aspirational; decision-makers must undertake genuine research and cannot reach conclusions that evidence contradicts COI without proper investigation.

For practitioners and applicants, this case highlights both the importance of timely submission of relevant evidence (including medical reports and COI documentation) and the corresponding obligation of decision-makers to consider such evidence when received. It also underscores that visible, objective evidence of claimed harm—photographs, scarring, medical examination findings—must be integrated into the credibility and risk assessment. For policy and institutional purposes, it signals that gaps in the medical practitioner panel established under section 23 may need to be addressed to ensure the statutory mechanism is accessible in practice, and that decision-makers’ own COI inquiry capacity must be adequate to discharge the inquisitorial duty, particularly in claims involving country-specific practices central to the applicant’s fear of persecution.