Case No. UKUT-00092-(IAC)

v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2001] 1 AC 489, 495. The question is whether the home state is unable or unwilling to discharge its duty to establish and operate a system for the protection against persecution of its own nationals … ” 15.It is worth repeating Lord Hope’s reminder in HJ (Iran) that the surrogate protection of the Refugee Convention is only activated upon the failure of state protection. In Horvath v Home Secretary [2001] 1 AC 489 Lord Hope said this: “…I consider that the obligation to afford refugee status arises only if the person's own state is unable or unwilling to discharge its own duty to protect its own nationals. I think that it follows that, in order to satisfy the fear test in a non-state agent case, the applicant for refugee status must show that the persecution which he fears consist of acts of violence or ill-treatment against which the state is unable or unwilling to provide protection. The applicant may have a well-founded fear of threats to his life due to famine or civil war or of isolated acts of violence or ill-treatment for a Convention reason which may be perpetrated against him. But the risk, however severe, and the fear, however well-founded, do not entitle him to the status of a refugee. The Convention has a more limited objective, the limits of which are identified by the list of Convention reasons and by the principle of surrogacy.” 16.Lord Clyde put it in similar terms at 510f, as follows: “There must be in place a system of domestic protection and machinery for the detection, prosecution and punishment of actings contrary to the purposes which the Convention requires to have protected. More importantly there must be an ability and readiness to operate that machinery.” 17.Lord Clyde added at 511c that “it will require cogent evidence that the state which is able to afford protection is unwilling to do so, especially in the case of a democracy”. 18.The Horvath test has been clarified by the Court of Appeal on several occasions. In