RHG v Secretary of State for the Home Department: checked Ethiopian passport defeats Eritrean asylum claim

The First-tier Tribunal has dismissed the asylum appeal of a man who said he was an Eritrean Pentecostal Christian, ruling that a passport checked by United States and French authorities outweighed a birth certificate accepted as genuine by an expert.

In RHG v Secretary of State for the Home Department (PA/79300/2024), heard in Birmingham on 16 September 2026, the parties agreed that the sole factual issue was whether the appellant was Eritrean or Ethiopian. Mr Rashid appeared for the appellant and Mr Swaby for the Home Office.

The appellant, who is protected by an anonymity order, said he was born in Eritrea in 2001 and left illegally as a small child with his parents, who faced persecution because of their faith. He said he lived in Ethiopia until January 2023, then travelled through South Sudan and France, reaching the UK on 12 August 2023 and claiming asylum the next day.

The Home Office rejected both his identity and his nationality. It relied on a US visa application made on 28 December 2022, supported by a passport in a different name recording Ethiopian nationality and bearing the appellant's photograph. The application was refused because the US authorities doubted he would return to Ethiopia. The refusal letter also cited inconsistencies over passport ownership and visa applications, and his limited knowledge of Eritrea.

The appellant's evidence included an Eritrean birth certificate said to have been sent by relatives, photographs and letters from a woman he identified as his mother, a letter from an Ethiopian school confirming Eritrean nationality, and an expert report concluding that the certificate was genuine. The Home Office did not challenge the report but argued that the certificate belonged to someone else.

The judge accepted that the appellant could not claim asylum in France because he was under an agent's control, so section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 did not count against him. Applying the two-stage test under section 32 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 from JCK (s.32 NABA 2022) Botswana [2024] UKUT 00100, and the structured credibility approach in KB & AH (credibility-structured approach) Pakistan [2017] UKUT 491 (IAC), the judge assessed the evidence in the round.

Photographs of the appellant with the woman, and of her beside Eritrean landmarks, did not establish who she was. There was no documentary evidence of the relationship, and it was unusual that she would have kept his documents safe but not her own. The appellant had also been untruthful about owning a passport and applying for a visa, though the judge stressed that this did not necessarily taint the rest of his account. His claim to have used more than one forged passport was rejected as irrational, given that the first had been used for a visa application without being flagged.

The passport proved decisive. Having been checked by US authorities, and again on entry to France, without being identified as a forgery, it was more likely than not the appellant's own. The same finding followed on the lower standard. The birth certificate, though genuine, was found not to belong to him. Little weight attached to the Ethiopian Embassy's refusal to assist, because the appellant had supplied only a passport number and a name not associated with it. The evidence from the woman said to be his mother was not accepted in light of the passport.

The judge determined that the appellant is Ethiopian and that his identity is as asserted by the Home Office. The appeal was dismissed on all grounds and no fee award was made.