Januzi v. Secretary of State for the Home Department

The appeals of four applicants for asylum in Britain who were denied status as refugees by the secretary of state for the Home Department (defendant) were consolidated. Gzim Januzi (plaintiff) was an Albanian who experienced ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Serbs in Mitrovica in Kosovo and fled to Britain. Sudanese citizens Abdoulazaz Hamid, Ibrahim Gaafar, and Noureldeain Mohammed (plaintiffs) also fled to Britain after experiencing persecution perpetrated by bands of marauding Arabs in Darfur that the government encouraged and did not curtail. Each applicant was denied refugee status because it was reasonable to expect that the applicant could relocate to another area of his home country without undue hardship. The Refugee Convention (the convention) did not address the circumstance in which an applicant for asylum who had a well-founded fear of persecution in one area but who could reasonably relocate internally to another area chose to seek asylum in a foreign country instead. Januzi argued that expecting him to relocate to Pristina in Kosovo would be unduly harsh, mainly for medical reasons. Hamid, Gaafar, and Mohammed feared discrimination or persecution if they relocated to Khartoum in Sudan. Their appeals reached Britain’s highest court for review. Although such a circumstance was not addressed by the convention, the court considered it clear that if a person chose to seek refuge in a foreign country, even though the person could have relocated internally to a place where there was no well-founded fear of persecution, where there was access to protection, and to where it was reasonable to expect relocation, the person was not outside the country of nationality due to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons given in the convention as reflected in the definition of a refugee.