1809621 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered the protection visa applications of two individuals from Pakistan. The applicants claimed they feared persecution upon return to Pakistan due to the applicant's gender, her marriage to someone from a different caste, her inheritance rights, and her mental health issues, all of which were allegedly linked to her family's disapproval and threats of violence, including honour killing.

The central legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the applicants qualified for protection obligations under Australian law. This required assessing the credibility of their claims and determining if, based on accepted facts, they faced a real risk of significant harm or persecution in Pakistan, either as refugees or under complementary protection provisions. The Tribunal had to consider whether the applicant belonged to a particular social group and if the feared harm was a necessary and foreseeable consequence of their removal from Australia.

The Tribunal accepted the applicant's account of experiencing physical and sexual assault from her cousins, who opposed her marriage outside their caste and sought to control her inheritance. It also accepted her diagnosis of depressive anxiety disorder and acknowledged the documented risks faced by women in Pakistan, including gender-based violence, discrimination in inheritance, and the prevalence of honour killings. The Tribunal found that the cumulative effect of these factors meant the applicant would face a real risk of persecution in Pakistan, satisfying the criterion for protection obligations under section 36(2)(a) of the *Migration Act 1958*.

Consequently, the Tribunal remitted the matter for reconsideration with a direction that the applicants satisfy the criterion set out in section 36(2)(a) of the *Migration Act 1958*, meaning Australia has protection obligations towards them.