CH v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Facts

The appellant, CH, is a national of Namibia and a member of the Himba tribe, a tribe which the respondent's own Country Policy and Information Note Namibia: Women fearing gender based violence December 2025 confirms practices child marriage. She claims that her family suspected from a young age that she was gay and that the tribal elders forced her, at the age of ten, into marriage with a much older man who was a senior police officer. She describes the marriage as violent and abusive and says she was raped throughout it, particularly once her husband realised she was not attracted to him; she had a son in 2009. She says she reported her husband to the police for violence and rape in 2015 and 2016 without result, went to South Africa as a student in 2016 but was forcibly brought home by her uncle, and in April 2023 travelled to Botswana with the help of church members before flying to the United Kingdom, entering on 26 April 2023. She claimed asylum on 16 April 2024, and the Secretary of State refused the claim on 25 April 2025, accepting that she had been a victim of gender based violence but not that she was bisexual. She appealed to the First-tier Tribunal, which heard the appeal at Hatton Cross, where gender based violence was confirmed as the focus of the claim.