Can the court order the return of a child despite a grant of humanitarian protection? – Rob George KC in LM (A Child: Return Order to the UAE; Humanitarian Protection), Re [2026] EWHC 1988 (Fam)
31st Jul 2026 | Cases
Professor Rob George KC led Naima Asif of Pump Court Chambers, acting for the applicant mother in Re LM (A Child: Return Order to the UAE; Humanitarian Protection) [2026] EWHC 1988 (Fam). Instructed by Sulema Jahangir of Dawson Cornwell, Rob and Naima secured extensive findings of domestic abuse against the father, underpinning the court’s welfare conclusion to return the child to her home in the UAE in the mother’s care.
The case has particular significance for the court’s discussion of humanitarian protection in the context of international child abduction. The father had applied for asylum on his arrival in the UK, with the child as his dependant, but had been granted the lesser status of humanitarian protection. The case concerned the relevance of that status and the extent to which the Supreme Court’s guidance in G v G [2021] UKSC 9 applies to such a case. Accepting the argument put forward by Rob and Naima, along with the Children’s Guardian, the court held that there was no automatic bar against refoulement in humanitarian protection cases, though if Article 2 or 3 of the ECHR would be engaged on the person’s return then there could be a restriction in a particular case. However, this analysis would form part of the court’s welfare evaluation and would not need to be seen as a separate area of analysis.
