Families in Gaza have won a legal case against the Home Office after a judge ruled the department’s decisions were a “disproportionate interference” in their right to a family life.
Two challenges were brought against the Home Office in February this year after it refused to decide on family reunion applications from families in Gaza without biometric data, including fingerprints and photographs.
In an immigration tribunal judgment handed down in the upper tribunal on 4 April, Judge Jackson and Judge Gleeson ruled in favour of the Palestinian families and quashed the Home Office’s decisions as “disproportionate interference” with their “rights to respect for private and family life”.
The judges found the government department reached “irrational and unreasonable” conclusions to justify its refusal to consider the families’ reunion applications.
The judges also found specific sections of Home Office guidance to be in breach of article 8 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) as it requires “evidence that a person faces a personal risk of harm, ‘which is separate to the level of risk faced by the wider population’”.
Jackson said: “We do not consider that in the context of the conflict in Gaza … that it is necessary for a person to show that they are specifically targeted to be able to establish that they are at risk due to their personal circumstances.”
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, since Hamas’s attack on Israel when more than 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage in October last year.
One of the Palestinian families who brought the legal challenge, referred to as RM and others, are parents and two children who applied to reunite with their daughter and sister, who is studying in the UK. The other family, referred to as WM and others, is a Palestinian woman with four young children who applied to join her brother, a British citizen living in the UK.
Both families were forced to flee their homes to the south of Gaza due to Israel’s bombardment. They lacked access to food, water and medical treatment and had close family or friends killed.
The families requested for their family reunion applications to be substantively decided before enrolling biometric data due to the situation in Gaza. The visa application centre in the besieged Strip is closed and the nearest functioning centre is in Cairo, Egypt.
However, the requests were refused by the Home Office in both cases on similar grounds, including that the families’ circumstances were not “materially different to other people in Gaza” or “compelling as to make them exceptional”.
The Islington Law Centre and the Migrants’ Law Project at Asylum Aid brought legal challenges against the Home Office regarding the individual cases and the Home Office’s policy on biometric deferral. The families received an oral decision in the upper tribunal in early March, due to the urgent nature of the claims, and the judgment was handed down last week.
Cecilia Correale, a solicitor at the Islington Law Centre, said: “This is an important judgment with wider consequences which recognises that the Home Office has adopted policies in breach of article 8 ECHR which it is applying to multiple families seeking to be reunited.”
A spokesperson for the Gaza Families Reunited campaign, which is calling for the creation of a Ukraine-style visa scheme for Palestinians trapped in Gaza, said it was “relieved” for the families.
They added: “The Home Office must now urgently rectify its policy and approach to ensure that family members of Palestinians in the UK who are eligible for reunification under existing routes are actually able to exercise their rights.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We have received the outcome of the judicial review proceedings and are considering the impact. It would be inappropriate to comment further.”
• This article was amended on 8 April 2024 to correct the date that the immigration tribunal judgment was handed down, and to add the information that Judge Gleeson was party to it as well as Judge Jackson.
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