GS v Secretary of State for the Home Department: asylum appeal fails on sexuality credibility grounds

A First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has dismissed the protection and human rights appeal of a Congolese woman who claimed asylum on the basis of her sexuality, ruling that significant inconsistencies in her account were not adequately explained.

The case, heard at Priory Courts, Birmingham, before Judge K Feeney, concerned an appellant referred to as GS, a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo born in 1990. She had appealed under section 82(1) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 against the Secretary of State's refusal of her claim, made in March 2023 and refused in March 2025. An anonymity direction was made given the appellant's stated fear for her life in the DRC.

The parties narrowed the dispute considerably before the hearing began. The Home Office conceded that lesbians face persecution in the DRC and did not challenge the plausibility of the appellant's account, nor did it rely on state protection, internal relocation, or section 8 of the 2004 Act. It was agreed that the sole issue was whether the appellant is in fact a lesbian, that the case did not turn on general credibility, and that if the tribunal accepted her sexuality the appeal would succeed on convention grounds. The Article 8 claim was accepted to stand or fall with the protection claim, and no Article 3 medical claim was pursued.

Applying the two-stage test set out in section 32 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, as clarified in JCK (s.32 NABA 2022) Botswana [2024] UKUT 00100, Judge Feeney found against the appellant. While acknowledging that her witness statement was detailed and that the general narrative was accepted as plausible, the judge identified several inconsistencies considered too significant to overlook.

Chief among these was the appellant's failure, across two substantive interviews, to mention two relationships she later described in her witness statement as significant, namely those with individuals referred to as P and H, having named only one partner, NM, during questioning. The tribunal also noted conflicting accounts of the timing and duration of the relationship with NM, an omission in the screening interview of any reference to fear of her husband despite this later forming the central basis of her claimed flight from the DRC, and a discrepancy over whether she had been employed at her stepmother's café.

The judge rejected the argument that these gaps stemmed from difficulty discussing her sexuality, noting that the appellant had been willing to describe intimate details elsewhere in her evidence, including matter that the interviewer had asked her to curtail. Limited weight was also placed on a supporting witness statement from a woman referred to as FK, who did not attend to give oral evidence and whose account, the judge found, described little beyond a close friendship.

Having found the appellant had not established her sexuality on the required standard, the judge held that the protection claim and the accompanying Article 8 claim both failed. The appeals on asylum, humanitarian protection, and Article 8 grounds were dismissed, and no fee award was made. The anonymity direction made at the outset of proceedings remains in force.