United Kingdom Asylum and Immigration Tribunal

Arafah & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Saudi Arabia) [1999] UKIAT 20157

HX-64723-96

IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL

Date of hearing: 01 April 1998

Date Determination notified: 04 March 1999

Before

Mr. C.M.G. Ockelton Mrs. J. M. Abrahams JP Miss S I Hewitt JP

Between

 

Arafah & Ors	APPELLANT
and
Secretary of State for the Home Department	RESPONDENT

DETERMINATION AND REASONS

[Heard on 1st April 1998 and on 17 December 1998] The appellants are all members of the same family, it has not been suggested before us that their situations are materially distinguishable one from another and we propose to determine this appeal on the basis it was argued before us, by reference only to the first appellant, whom we shall call "the appellant". The appellants all appeal against the determination of a Special Adjudicator (Mrs C J W Malins) dismissing their appeals against the decision of the respondent on 30 January 1996 refusing to vary their leave to enter the United Kingdom on the basis of asylum. Before the Tribunal they were represented by Miss G Elliman of Immigration Advisory Service and the respondent was represented by Mr R Burke. The nationality of the appellants is in issue. The appellant is the holder of a Jordanian passport issued on 7 March 1993 and valid for five years. It was on the basis of that passport that he obtained entry to the United Kingdom. It is now said on the appellants' behalf that they are not Jordanian nationals but that they are Palestinians who hold Jordanian passports merely as a matter of convenience. As Palestinians they are, it is said. persons who have no nationality within the meaning of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the status of refugees. It follows, it is said, that the appellants status as refugees is to be considered by reference to their country of former habitual residence, which is Saudi Arabia. It is further argued on their behalf that Saudi Arabia is a place to which they have no right to return and hence to which, within the meaning of the Convention, they are unable return. It is conceded that they have no well-founded fear of persecution in Jordan. There is no evidence that they have a well-founded fear of persecution in Saudi Arabia. It seems to us that that last point is, in fact, sufficient of dispose of this appeal. As the Tribunal held in Sivakumaran (18147), a person who claims to be a refugee, even if he is of no nationality, and unable to return to his country of former habitual residence, must base his claim on a well-founded fear of persecution for a Convention reason in that country. In the present appeal, the appellants make no claim to have a well-founded fear of persecution anywhere. It seems to us that, whatever else they are, they are not refugees within the meaning of the 1951 Convention.

Be that as it may, the heart of the appellants' claim is that they are not Jordanian but stateless. Miss Elliman drew our attention to the evidence relating to the issue of Jordanian passports to Palestinians, and referred also to the decision of the Tribunal in lvanov (R. 12583).

The evidential material before us is somewhat repetitive: it appears to us that there may be a common source for much of it. We find the following facts on the basis of UNCHR Refwortd Country Information Response JOR3194(1989), JOR16379.E (1994) and JOR22351.E (1995); an Amnesty International document : "Fear. Flight and Forcible Exile- Refugees in the Middle East dated September 1997; and the United States' State Department report for Jordan 1997, dated January 30. 1998. Following the first mass flight of Palestinians in 1948, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established in 1949 to assist. Palestinian refugees who had fled their homes. Of the Arab countries served by UNRWA only Jordan and Syria offered Palestinian refugees any citizenship rights. In Jordan, Palestinians were granted full citizen rights, although these were limited in 1988. In Syria, Palestinians received all citizenship right except the right of suffrage. In every other Arab country the rights of Palestinians were considerably less than those of citizens. Prior to 1988 Palestinians were given full Jordanian five-year passports. In the period from 1988 to 1995, Jordanian passports were of two types: two-year passports and five-year passports. Five-year passports were issued only to citizens and "according to a Jordanian lawyer in Amman, a Palestinian who is issued a five-year Jordanian passport after 31 July 1988 is considered a permanent resident and citizen of Jordan", although it is said that such a person may suffer expulsion for undisclosed security reasons. A person who was not a Jordanian citizen would be issued with a two-year passport. This was for use as a travel document and did not give any citizenship rights.

Since 1995, the position has been that Palestinians without other travel documentation receive five-year passports, but a passport issued in such circumstances do not carry citizenship rights: they are provided for travel purposes only. Miss Elliman submitted that the evidence on citizenship was "equivocal". She asked us to find that there was a substantial degree of likelihood that the appellants were stateless: she submitted, following the decision of the Tribunal in lvanov , that that was the appropriate standard of proof in relation to the present issue. Mr Burke submitted that the evidence was not equivocal but, on the contrary, clearly pointed to the appellants being Jordanian nationals. We have read lvanov. We note that the Tribunal's ruling on the standard of proof in that case was made without argument, but by agreement between the parties. It is our view that the language of "a reasonable degree of likelihood" and the other phrases adopted in Sivakumaran [1988] AC 958 in respect of establishing that a person has a well-founded fear of persecution should be limited to that issue. The question of an appellant's nationality has no direct connection with his claim to have a well-founded fear of persecution, particularly in this case where the appellants do not claim to have such a fear anywhere in the world. The appellants' nationality is simply a fact: which they must prove to the civil standard. If Miss Elliman is right and the evidence is equivocal, it follows that, as the appellants have the burden of proof, they would lose on this issue.

We think, however, that the evidence is not equivocal. The appellant's passport was issued in 1993, and was valid for five years.. At that time a five- year Jordanian passport was clear evidence of Jordanian citizenship, if the appellant had not been a Jordanian citizen he would have received a two-year passport, valid for travel only and carrying no implication of citizenship. The document produced by the appellant is evidence that he was in 1993 a Jordanian citizen and it has not been suggested to us that his position, or the position of any other of the appellants, has changed since then. We find as a fact that the appellants are Jordanian citizens.

As we have said, it is not suggested that they have any well-founded fear of persecution in Jordan. Their appeal are accordingly dismissed

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