Evidence for the issues that decide protection claims.
Each ground turns on a different evidential question. The report must answer that question with current, attributable country material — and say plainly where the material does not reach.
What each ground must prove, and where reports most often fail.
Thematic focus is not a label. It is the question the evidence must answer.
A report that restates general country hardship without mapping it to the directed ground will not survive scrutiny. The table below is the discipline we write to; the sections that follow set out each ground in full.
| Ground | What the evidence must establish | Common weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Political persecution | Who targets the profile, why, and with what consequence on return | Treating membership of a party as risk without evidence of how that party is treated now |
| Religious persecution | Law, enforcement practice, and social risk for the specific faith or conversion path | Citing blasphemy or apostasy statutes without evidence of how they are applied |
| LGBTQ+ asylum | Criminalisation, enforcement, family and community risk, and whether 'discretion' is available in practice | Assuming criminalisation equals persecution, or that silence equals safety |
| Gender-based violence | The harm feared, whether effective state protection exists, and whether relocation is reasonably open | Stopping at prevalence of violence without addressing protection and relocation |
| Ethnic persecution | How the minority is identified, treated, and whether documentation or status compounds risk | General minority hardship without a pathway to the claimant's profile |
| Credibility & consistency | Cultural, linguistic, trauma and procedural reasons an account may vary — and those that do not | Usurping the tribunal's credibility finding or advocating for belief |
| Internal relocation | Whether a place of safety is reasonably available in practice for this profile | Naming a city without addressing access, livelihood, documentation, or secondary targeting |
| Country guidance cases | Whether the facts and country picture still sit inside the guidance, or require departure | Re-arguing the guidance instead of evidencing change or distinction |
State and non-state targeting of opposition, activists, and imputed opinion.
Risk turns on how the profile is seen by those who punish it.
Political claims usually fail in the evidence when the report cannot show how a person with this role, history, or imputed opinion would be identified and treated now — not how opposition was treated five years ago, and not how a famous activist would be treated if the claimant is neither.
What the evidence must establish
The actors who target the profile (state, militia, party apparatus), the forms of harm currently documented, and how a person with the claimant's role, visibility, or imputed opinion would be identified on return.
Common evidential weaknesses
Outdated opposition analysis, conflating criticism of government with organised political activity, and asserting risk without addressing whether the claimant's profile is visible to the actors said to persecute.
Minority faith, conversion, apostasy, and the gap between law and practice.
Statute, enforcement, and social consequence are three different proofs.
A religious claim may turn on prosecution, on community violence the state will not stop, or on both. The report must keep those routes separate, date the evidence, and address how the claimant's faith or conversion would become known on return.
What the evidence must establish
The legal position (including apostasy, blasphemy, or recognition of minority faiths), how those rules are enforced in the relevant region, and the social consequences — family, employer, community — that sit outside formal prosecution.
Common evidential weaknesses
Quoting statutes without enforcement practice; treating conversion as uniformly dangerous without addressing how conversion is discovered; ignoring regional variation inside the same country.
Criminalisation, enforcement, social risk, and the discretion question.
Concealment is not a country condition. It is a demand the forum must test.
Reports on sexual orientation and gender identity claims must address what the law says, what police and courts actually do, what families and communities do, and whether expecting the person to hide is a realistic or lawful answer to risk. Those are evidential questions, not slogans.
What the evidence must establish
Whether same-sex conduct or identity is criminalised, how the law is enforced, what non-state actors do, and whether living 'discreetly' is a real option or a demand that the person conceal a protected characteristic to avoid harm.
Common evidential weaknesses
Relying on the absence of recent prosecutions as proof of safety; ignoring family and community violence; treating Western NGO reporting as interchangeable with local evidence without weighing bias and reach.
FGM, honour-based violence, domestic violence — protection and relocation.
Prevalence is not protection. Relocation is not a city name.
Gender-based claims are often lost where the report proves that violence is widespread but never answers whether the state will protect this person, or whether another part of the country is reasonably open to her. Those are the questions the report must carry.
What the evidence must establish
The specific harm feared (FGM, honour-based violence, domestic violence, trafficking risk), whether the state provides effective protection in practice for that profile, and whether internal relocation is reasonably available without undue hardship.
Common evidential weaknesses
Documenting prevalence of violence without answering sufficiency of protection; assuming shelters or hotlines equal protection; relocating a survivor on paper without addressing how she would be found or unsupported.
Minority treatment, documentation, and access to protection.
Identification comes before treatment.
Ethnic and racial claims require a clear account of how the minority is recognised in practice — papers, language, locality, naming — and what follows from that recognition. Statelessness and denied documentation are often part of the same evidential picture.
What the evidence must establish
How the minority is identified (language, name, documents, residence), the pattern of targeting, and whether statelessness, denied documentation, or restricted movement compounds the risk on return.
Common evidential weaknesses
General human-rights reporting on a minority that never connects to the claimant's locality or profile; asserting discrimination as persecution without the severity or persistence the forum's test requires.
Cultural, linguistic, and trauma context — without deciding belief.
Explain why accounts vary. Do not decide whether they are true.
Credibility assessments are formal expert reports: structured, sourced, and written to be tested. They address memory, trauma, interpretation, cultural framing, and interview conditions. They do not replace the tribunal's finding on whether the claim is believed.
What the evidence must establish
The cultural, linguistic, trauma, and procedural factors that can explain variation, omission, or non-linear narrative — and a clear statement of what those factors cannot explain. Credibility findings remain for the decision-maker.
Common evidential weaknesses
Writing as an advocate for belief; offering a diagnosis the expert is not qualified to give; ignoring interpreter and interview conditions that shaped the original account.
Safety, access, and reasonableness — as separate evidential questions.
A place is not available because it appears on a map.
Internal relocation analysis must show whether the proposed place is safe for this profile, whether the person can get there and remain, and whether expecting them to do so is reasonable. Sufficiency of protection, where raised, is addressed as its own question — not collapsed into relocation.
What the evidence must establish
Whether a proposed place of relocation is safe for this profile, whether the person can practically get there and remain, and whether expecting them to do so is reasonable given documentation, livelihood, family ties, and secondary risk.
Common evidential weaknesses
Naming a large city as safe because it is large; ignoring how the original agents of persecution operate nationwide; treating economic hardship as irrelevant when it makes relocation impossible in practice.
Compatibility with guidance, and evidence for departure or distinction.
Guidance is a starting point. Current evidence decides whether it still holds.
Where a claim sits inside country guidance or leading authority, the report must say how. Where the facts fall outside it, or the country picture has moved on, the report must evidence the distinction or the change — dated, sourced, and aimed at the findings the guidance actually made.
What the evidence must establish
Where the claim sits against country guidance or leading authority: which findings still hold on current evidence, which have been overtaken, and which facts of the case fall outside the guidance's scope.
Common evidential weaknesses
Re-litigating the guidance case instead of evidencing material change; citing government CPIN or equivalent as conclusive without addressing gaps the guidance itself left open; failing to date the country picture against the guidance.
Confirmed instruction by instruction against the expert available.
Countries we are most often instructed on
Listed coverage is subject to confirmation against the available expert roster and the needs of each instruction. If your country is not listed, ask — we would rather decline than accept work we cannot source properly.
Questions before you instruct
- Do you cover every thematic ground in every country?
- No. Coverage is confirmed instruction by instruction against the expert available for that country and ground. If we cannot source the instruction properly, we decline it rather than stretch an expert beyond their field.
- Will a report decide my client's credibility?
- No. Credibility findings remain for the tribunal or court. A credibility assessment explains cultural, linguistic, trauma, and contextual factors that bear on how an account should be read — so the decision-maker has analytical tools without the report becoming advocacy.
- How do you handle internal relocation and state protection?
- As separate evidential questions. The report addresses whether effective protection exists for the profile, and whether a place of safety is reasonably available in practice — not as slogans, but against current, sourced country material.
Name the ground, the country, and the forum.
We confirm whether we can take the instruction against the expert available — before any work begins.