Paper short abstract:

not used

Paper long abstract:

Somalia has remained the place of origin of one of the largest national groups of asylum seekers in the UK throughout the last 20 years. During that period, responses to their claims by the Home Office, the courts and tribunals have changed dramatically from a readiness to grant asylum or subsidiary protection to virtually all Somalis (from the late 1980s until 2002) to the present treatment of their claims with intense skepticism both as to the autobiographical accounts on which they rely and what is said about the nature of risk in Somalia. This paper will describe those changing responses including how asylum seekers’ testimony is obtained and assessed; the reception of expert evidence (particularly, country and medical expert evidence); the assessment of country conditions and how refusal of asylum has been rationalized and justified. It will also describe how the presentation of asylum claims by Somali asylum seekers themselves and by their lawyers has changed during the same period partly in response to these changes and also in consequence of the changing situation in Somalia; the ‘information revolution’ and changing arrangements for the provision of legal services. Whilst most of these issues are common to asylum claims and claimants generally, they have features that are specific to Somalis’ and which the paper will identify.