Background
Aracely Montano Riascos and her two children, citizens of Colombia, sought refugee protection based on feared harm in Colombia and Chile. They alleged a risk of extortion by the Colombian gang La Empresa and, in Chile, harassment by Montano Riascos’s former colleague and inadequate police protection. Montano Riascos, who had permanent resident status in Chile, also described violence by her former spouse.
The Refugee Protection Division rejected the claims after finding that the applicants had a viable internal flight alternative in Colombia. The Refugee Appeal Division confirmed that decision. It found no evidence that La Empresa had sought the applicants after they left Colombia in 2018 or that the gang had the means and motivation to pursue them in the proposed relocation area. Although acknowledging systemic discrimination and barriers affecting Afro-Colombians, the RAD concluded that the applicants had not shown that relocation would be objectively unreasonable. They sought judicial review of that ruling.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Ngo dismissed the application, holding that the RAD’s decision was reasonable. The Court found no error in the RAD’s application of the two-part internal-flight-alternative test: the applicants had not established a serious possibility of persecution or a risk under sections 96 or 97 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in the proposed location, and they had not shown that relocation there would be objectively unreasonable.
The Court rejected the argument that the RAD failed to assess cumulatively the hardships associated with the applicants’ identities as Afro-Colombians, including possible barriers to housing, education, health care, and employment. Read as a whole, the RAD’s reasons addressed systemic discrimination, vulnerability, intersectionality, and Montano Riascos’s circumstances as an Afro-Colombian woman and single mother. General country-condition evidence did not by itself meet the high threshold for establishing that an internal flight alternative was unreasonable, particularly without personalized evidence that relocation would jeopardize the applicants’ lives or safety. Reaching the opposite result would have required the Court to reweigh evidence, which is not its role on reasonableness review.
Key Takeaways
- A viable internal flight alternative defeats a refugee claim under either section 96 or section 97 of the IRPA.
- The second part of the internal-flight-alternative test requires actual and concrete evidence that relocation would jeopardize a claimant’s life or safety; ordinary hardship, diminished opportunities, and generalized adverse conditions are insufficient.
- A reviewing court reads administrative reasons holistically and will not intervene merely to reassess country-condition evidence already considered by the RAD.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the demanding evidentiary burden on refugee claimants challenging an internal flight alternative because of systemic discrimination. Evidence of widespread racial barriers remains relevant, but claimants must connect those conditions to their individual circumstances and demonstrate consequences meeting the governing high threshold.
It also reinforces the limits of judicial review: where the RAD meaningfully addresses a claimant’s intersecting vulnerabilities and reaches a coherent conclusion grounded in the record, the Federal Court will not substitute its own weighing of the evidence.