New Liverpool Law Review Article Calls for Decolonising Asylum Credibility Assessments

Published in the Liverpool Law Review, this article reveals how colonial legacies shape asylum credibility assessments, proposing a decolonial feminist framework for fairer refugee protection through comparative international human rights law.

Spread the love

I am delighted to share my latest peer-reviewed article, recently published in the Liverpool Law Review.

Decolonizing Disbelief: A Feminist Legal Reconstruction of Queer Nigerian Asylum across Postcolonial Jurisdictions

📖 Read the full article here:
Springer Link (Open Access/PDF)

This article makes a significant contribution to comparative international human rights law, international refugee law, and international asylum law by examining how credibility assessments in refugee status determination continue to be shaped by colonial legal legacies. It argues that disbelief in asylum adjudication is neither accidental nor neutral but reflects enduring racialized and gendered assumptions that influence whose testimony is accepted as truthful.

Using a comparative doctrinal methodology, the research analyses asylum jurisprudence and policy across the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada, demonstrating that despite their different legal traditions, these jurisdictions reproduce remarkably similar credibility frameworks that disadvantage queer Nigerian asylum seekers. The article introduces the concept of “racialized disbelief” as a form of epistemic injustice and proposes a decolonial feminist jurisprudence of recognition grounded in trauma-informed adjudication, African feminist jurisprudence, and international human rights principles.

The article contributes to contemporary debates on the interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugee status determination, equality, dignity, non-discrimination, and access to international protection. It argues that asylum systems should move beyond suspicion-based credibility assessments towards legal frameworks that recognise cultural diversity, relational understandings of identity, and the lived realities of vulnerable asylum seekers.

I hope this research stimulates further scholarly dialogue among academics, judges, practitioners, policymakers, and international organisations committed to advancing a more just, inclusive, and decolonised international asylum system.

I welcome your thoughts, comments, and scholarly engagement.