1617277 (Refugee)

This matter concerned an application for review of a delegate's decision to refuse the applicant, a citizen of Zambia, a protection visa. The applicant arrived in Australia in 2012 as a student and subsequently applied for a protection visa in 2015. She has two Australian citizen children with their father, an Australian citizen also born in Zambia, with whom she claims not to be in a relationship.

The primary legal issues before the court were whether the applicant met the criteria for a protection visa under section 36(2)(a) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth) (the Act), which requires the applicant to be a refugee with a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, or under section 36(2)(aa) of the Act, which concerns complementary protection where there are substantial grounds for believing the applicant faces a real risk of significant harm if removed from Australia. The court also considered the application of section 423A of the Act regarding adverse inferences from new claims or evidence not previously presented.

The court reasoned that the applicant's claims of persecution in Zambia, including threats from her father due to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, past physical abuse, and the alleged corruption of police, needed to be assessed against the refugee and complementary protection criteria. The court noted that the delegate had not produced a Country Information Report for Zambia, and that some documents from the Department's file were missing. The court concluded that the decision to refuse the protection visa should be remitted for reconsideration, indicating that the applicant's claims and the evidence presented warranted further examination.