CRI026 v The Republic of Nauru

The case of CRI026 v The Republic of Nauru involved an appeal as of right to the High Court of Australia from a judgment of the Supreme Court of Nauru. The appellant sought recognition as a refugee or as a person to whom Nauru owed complementary protection under Nauru's Refugees Convention Act 2012. The Secretary of the Department of Justice and Border Control had initially rejected the appellant's claims, a decision affirmed by the Refugee Status Review Tribunal and subsequently by the Supreme Court of Nauru.

The legal issues before the High Court included whether the appellant's ability to reasonably relocate within his country of origin was relevant to his claim for complementary protection, whether a typographical error in the Tribunal's reasons constituted an error, whether the ability of the appellant's family to relocate was relevant to assessing the appellant's own ability to relocate, and whether the Tribunal's finding that persecutors had little or no influence in a place of relocation was supported by evidence. The appellant also contended that the Tribunal had considered irrelevant matters concerning Sri Lanka and Tamils, thereby affecting its reasoning process.

The High Court considered the relevance of reasonable internal relocation to complementary protection, drawing on international jurisprudence and logic, and concluded it was relevant, just as it is to refugee protection. The Court also addressed a typographical error in the Tribunal's reasons, noting a corrigendum had been issued. Regarding the finding on the MQM's influence, the Court found that the Tribunal's assessment was based on cited sources, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary before the appellate courts, the finding was not demonstrably unsupported. The Court also refused leave to amend the notice of appeal to include arguments about the family's relocation and the Tribunal asking itself the wrong question, and ultimately dismissed the appeal.