Asylum/protection Statements

The Ministry of Justice and Public Security has asked for the Immigration Appeals Board’s (UNE) views on an R&D report on persecution based on religion and membership of a social group.

The report was written by Advocate Cecilie Schjatvet. Her mandate was to write a report on the Directorate of Immigration (UDI) and UNE’s practices relating to ‘protection based on religion or affiliation to a social group (sexual orientation)’. The report was to say something about the scope of such cases, what legal and other sources were used in the consideration of these cases, and how each individual case was assessed step by step in order to decide whether or not the asylum seeker had a need for protection. Then, the practice was to be compared with relevant guidelines/recommendations from the UNHCR and the provisions of the EU’s refugee status directive (Council Directive 2005/85/EC).

Schjatvet makes a number of recommendations on how UNE should change its practice. However, the author demonstrates on some points that she misunderstands UNE’s practice and memos, which weakens the learning value of the report. UNE is concerned with ensuring that our decisions and memos are easy to understand. We do not wish to give rise to misunderstandings about UNE’s practice or how we interpret the sources of law. UNE will therefore go through Schjatvet’s recommendations with our staff, to see how we can make our memos and decisions clearer.

Our reply to the Ministry states the following, among other things:

  1. UNE does not instruct anyone to act discretely to avoid persecution upon returning to their country of origin.
  2. UNE is loyal to the Norwegian Supreme Court’s method in cases relating to lesbians, gays and other sexual minorities.
  3. UNE uses the same methods as Norwegian courts in all asylum cases, including convert and homosexuality cases.
  4. UNE’s way of considering credibility in convert cases is the same method used by Norwegian courts.
  5. The court has found in favour of UNE in most convert and homosexuality cases brought before Norwegian courts. Where the court has not found fully in favour of UNE, it was not our methods that were criticised.

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