CH v Secretary of State for the Home Department: forced marriage asylum appeal allowed

A First-tier Tribunal has allowed the asylum appeal of a Namibian national, identified only as CH, after accepting her account of being forced into marriage at the age of ten and finding that her tribal identity left her unable to relocate safely within Namibia.

The decision, promulgated on 11 September 2026 following a hearing at Hatton Cross, was handed down by First-tier Tribunal Judge Seelhoff, who also determined the related case of MM the same week. CH had appealed against the Secretary of State's refusal, dated 25 April 2025, of an asylum claim made in April 2024. CH is a member of Namibia's Himba tribe, which the Respondent's own Country Policy and Information Note on gender-based violence confirms practises child marriage. She gave evidence that tribal elders arranged her marriage to a much older man, a senior police officer, and that she was raped and abused throughout the marriage, particularly once her husband realised she was not attracted to him.

The Respondent accepted that CH had been a victim of gender-based violence but did not accept that she was bisexual, and the refusal letter raised no express challenge to her account of the forced marriage itself beyond querying her husband's police rank. The judge observed that the Respondent had misunderstood the focus of the claim, noting CH had been consistent since her screening interview that her primary fear was of her abusive husband rather than any broader claim tied to her sexuality.

Applying the two-stage test under section 32 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, as set out in JCK (s.32 NABA 2022) Botswana [2024] UKUT 00100, the judge found that the Respondent had taken an unduly narrow view of the Convention reason engaged. Beyond CH's sexuality, her tribal origin was found capable of engaging the Convention, whether as a matter of race or as membership of a particular social group, given the significance of tribal identity within Namibian society.

On credibility, the judge treated CH as a vulnerable witness, noting she had never lived independently of her husband, and found her account consistent with the CPIN's description of both Himba child marriage practices and entrenched attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals. A discrepancy over the exact age at which CH first had a same-sex experience was found to damage her credibility to a limited extent, but was outweighed by the overall consistency of her evidence, corroborating police reports, and a more recent report detailing the alleged abduction and assault of her son by her husband in an apparent attempt to locate her.

The judge went on to find that sufficient protection was not available, concluding that the CPIN's headline assessment of effective state protection sat uneasily against its own evidence of under-resourced and non-operational gender-based violence units, and against CH's husband's seniority within the police. On relocation, the judge accepted evidence that Himba tribal membership is identifiable through distinctive surnames, meaning CH could not conceal her tribal identity, and that her husband had previously succeeded in tracing her to South Africa. Combined with her lack of experience living or working independently, this rendered internal relocation unreasonable.

The Article 8 grounds were found to be academic, as neither would have succeeded independently of the core asylum claim. The appeal was allowed on asylum grounds, with anonymity extended to CH, her son and her mother, and no fee award made, no fee having been paid.