Background
Prince Nyarko, a citizen of Ghana, arrived in Canada on a student visa in November 2023 and claimed refugee protection. He alleged that illegal miners in Ghana targeted him for harm after he authored a report criticizing their activities, which led his supervisor — a District Chief Executive — to have the miners’ equipment destroyed. Nyarko claimed the miners subsequently injured him and threatened his life, including through a threatening phone call warning that they would find him anywhere in Ghana.
The Refugee Protection Division (RPD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board refused his claim in December 2024, finding the determinative issue to be the availability of a viable internal flight alternative (IFA) in Ghana. The RPD also drew an adverse credibility inference regarding the alleged threatening phone call, which Nyarko had not mentioned in his Basis of Claim (BOC) narrative or its addendum. The Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) dismissed his appeal in May 2025, confirming that viable IFAs existed and that the agents of harm lacked both the means and motivation to locate Nyarko outside his local area.
Nyarko applied to the Federal Court for judicial review, arguing that the RAD’s IFA finding was unreasonable. The sole issue before Justice Southcott was whether the RAD’s viability determination withstood review on the reasonableness standard set out in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Southcott dismissed the application for judicial review, finding the RAD’s decision reasonable in all respects. Under the two-pronged IFA test drawn from Rasaratnam and Thirunavukkarasu, a claimant must show either that they face a serious possibility of persecution in the proposed IFA, or that relocation would be objectively unreasonable. The Court found the RAD correctly held that Nyarko failed both prongs.
On the first prong, the Court agreed that the documentary evidence Nyarko relied upon — including a statement from his supervisor, a police press release, a friend’s statutory declaration, and his sister’s statutory declaration — did not speak to efforts by the illegal miners to locate him outside his local area. The supervisor’s statement referenced the miners tracking Nyarko to Obuasi, but counsel conceded at the hearing that Obuasi is Nyarko’s own home area. The RAD was therefore entitled to find that the miners lacked the means or motivation to pursue Nyarko in the proposed IFAs, and its failure to expressly analyze each document did not render the decision unreasonable.
On the second prong, the Court found the RAD conducted a sufficient individualized assessment, considering Nyarko’s age, education, employment history, the size of the proposed IFA cities, and his employment concerns, before concluding he had not met the high threshold for showing relocation would be objectively unreasonable. Nyarko identified no evidence the RAD ignored or misconstrued, and his argument that he could not live openly in an IFA without triggering risk had already been addressed and rejected under the first prong.
Key Takeaways
- A claimant bears the onus to defeat at least one prong of the IFA test; speculative assertions about an agent of harm’s national reach, unsupported by country condition evidence or probative personal evidence, will not satisfy that burden.
- Evidence that agents of harm acted against a claimant within their local area does not, without more, establish the means or motivation to pursue the claimant in a geographically distinct IFA location.
- Omitting a material allegation — such as a threatening phone call going to the heart of the claim — from a BOC narrative and its addendum is a legitimate basis for an adverse credibility finding, even where other aspects of the claimant’s account are accepted.
- The RAD need not expressly analyze every piece of evidence if the evidence is not probative of the issue under consideration; its omission does not automatically render the decision unreasonable.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the demanding evidentiary burden refugee claimants face when challenging an internal flight alternative finding. Courts applying the Vavilov reasonableness standard will not interfere where the RAD has engaged with the central evidence and provided intelligible justification for concluding that agents of harm lack a national reach — even if every document is not individually canvassed. Claimants must adduce concrete, probative evidence of an agent’s capacity and intention to locate them across a country, not merely evidence of localized harm.
The case also serves as a practical reminder about BOC narrative completeness. The RAD and reviewing courts treat a claimant’s failure to include material allegations — particularly those going to the central issue of whether harm will follow the claimant throughout the country — as a credibility problem that is difficult to explain away at the hearing stage. Counsel should ensure that all facts relevant to an agent’s means and motivation are captured in the original narrative or any addendum filed before the RPD hearing.