Date: 20260115

Docket: IMM-22397-24

Citation: 2026 FC 60

Calgary, Alberta, January 15, 2026

PRESENT: Mr. Justice Brouwer

JUDGMENT AND REASONS

[1] The Applicants Nebiat Geremeskel and her three children seek judicial review of the Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] decision dismissing their appeal of the decision refusing their claim for refugee protection. For the reasons set out below I must refuse their application, because they have not demonstrated that the RAD’s finding that the Netherlands is willing and able to provide them with adequate state protection was unreasonable.

I. Background

[2] Ms. Geremeskel is a dual national of Eritrea and the Netherlands. Born in Eritrea, she fled that country in 2015 with her two eldest children and was reunited with her then-husband – their father – in the Netherlands, as he had proceeded her there. Her then-husband, a former member of the Eritrean government’s armed forces, had begun abusing drugs and alcohol and quickly became abusive towards Ms. Geremeskel. Ms. Geremeskel did not seek police protection, both because of the stigma that doing so would expose her to within the Eritrean community and because she feared her then-husband would make good on his threat to kill her if she reported any abuse to the police. Instead, she left him in 2016, taking up residence in a women’s shelter with their two daughters. While at the shelter, Ms. Geremeskel launched divorce proceedings. Although she was successful, her ex-husband retained visitation rights to see his children.

[3] In around August 2017, Ms. Geremeskel’s ex-husband entered her home and abused and sexually assaulted her. She became pregnant and gave birth to the youngest applicant in 2018. She asserts that her ex-husband denied paternity.

[4] Fearing her ex-husband and seeking relief from discrimination in the Netherlands, Ms. Geremeskel and her children travelled to Canada on July 28, 2022, and sought refugee protection.

[5] Their claims were heard on July 26, 2024, and by decision of the same date a Member of the Refugee Protection Division [RPD] rejected them. Although the RPD Member found Ms. Geremeskel to be a credible witness and accepted her testimony as true, the Member determined that it was unreasonable not to have sought police protection while in the Netherlands and found based on the objective evidence that adequate, operationally effective state protection was reasonably available to her. Having determined that Ms. Geremeskel and her children were not at risk in the Netherlands, the RPD found it unnecessary to assess their risk in Eritrea.

[6] Ms. Geremeskel appealed to the RAD, arguing that the RPD had erred in its state protection analysis by disregarding her reasons for not seeking state protection and failing to consider the objective evidence regarding country conditions in the Netherlands. A Member of the RAD dismissed her appeal. The RAD Member found that the RPD had considered all the evidence and had properly applied a contextual and intersectional approach to the evaluation of state protection, as required by Chairperson’s Guideline 4: Gender Considerations in Proceedings Before the Immigration and Refugee Board [Gender Guideline], in determining that Ms. Geremeskel had failed to take “all reasonable steps” to seek state protection in the Netherlands. The RAD found further that the racism and gender-based discrimination faced by Ms. Geremeskel and her children in the Netherlands, while significant, did not rise to the level of persecution.

II. Issues and standard of review

[7] Ms. Geremeskel challenges the RAD’s state protection analysis. She argues that the Member failed to consider the objective evidence regarding country conditions and the availability and effectiveness of state protection for racialized women in the Netherlands. She also maintains that the RAD Member failed to apply the Gender Guideline when evaluating the reasonableness of Ms. Geremeskel’s failure to seek state protection in the Netherlands.

[8] The issues raised by Ms. Geremeskel are subject to review for reasonableness. A reasonable decision is one that is based on an internally coherent and rational chain of analysis and that is justified in relation to the facts and law bearing upon it (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at para 85 [Vavilov]). The hallmarks of reasonableness are justification, intelligibility and transparency (Vavilov at paras 15, 100), and the principle at the heart of this standard is “responsive justification” (Mason v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 21 at para 10).

[9] Administrative decision makers need not respond to every argument or line of possible analysis, but the failure to meaningfully grapple with key issues or central arguments may call into question whether the decision-maker was actually alert and sensitive to the matter before it (Vavilov at para 128). As the Supreme Court of Canada reminded us in Vavilov, “Where the impact of a decision on an individual’s rights and interests is severe, the reasons provided to that individual must reflect the stakes” (Vavilov at para 133).

III. Analysis

A. Treatment of the objective evidence was reasonable

[10] Both the RPD and the RAD acknowledged, based on the objective evidence, that racialized women face significant discrimination in the Netherlands, and that there are shortcomings in the state response to this problem. They found, however, that the latest available evidence (from 2024) indicated that Dutch authorities effectively enforced laws against racial discrimination and discrimination against women.

[11] Ms. Geremeskel asserts that the RAD, and the RPD before it, erred by focusing on theoretical rather than operational adequacy of state protection, citing A.B. v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 237 at para 17. and the cases cited therein. She also argues that the RAD failed to consider three reports contained in the National Documentation Package [NDP] that were published between 2019-2022 and that, she says, “clearly show” that members of visible minority communities in the Netherlands “face discrimination that amounts to persecution.”

[12] If supported, these allegations about the decision would justify an order quashing it as unreasonable. However, a review of the decision establishes that contrary to Ms. Geremeskel’s assertions, the RAD Member explicitly addressed the difference between theoretical and operational adequacy and found the latter. Likewise contrary to Ms. Geremeskel’s allegation, the RAD analysed the most recent of the three purportedly ignored reports and explained why they preferred the 2024 reports in the same NDP to the earlier ones from 2019 and 2020 that were highlighted by Ms. Geremeskel. Ms. Geremeskel has not demonstrated that this treatment was unjustified or otherwise unreasonable. Nor was Ms. Geremeskel’s counsel able, before or during the hearing, to pinpoint anything in the three purportedly ignored reports to back up the claim that they “clearly showed” that the discrimination faced by racialized women in the Netherlands amounts to persecution. I find Ms. Geremeskel’s argument to be untethered to either the reasons or the record.

[13] While I agree with Ms. Geremeskel that the evidence she highlighted from 2019-2022 raises real concerns about the discrimination faced by racialized women in the Netherlands in areas including education, employment, housing and politics, the fact is that the RPD and the RAD shared that concern but determined based on the most recent evidence that the Netherlands was providing adequate and effective state protection. Ms. Geremeskel has not persuaded me that this determination was unreasonable. To the contrary, I find that the RAD’s reasoning regarding state protection is, as a whole, transparent, intelligible and justified, and reflects the record and submissions that were before it.

B. The RAD applied the Gender Guideline

[14] Ms. Geremeskel also argues that the RAD Member paid lip service to the Gender Guideline but failed to actually apply the intersectional and contextual analysis that it requires, including by accounting for her cultural background and history of gender-based violence.

[15] These too are serious claims. But they simply do not reflect the decision they purport to challenge. If all the RAD had done was assert that it was applying the Gender Guideline and then had proceeded to render findings that did not comport with it, Ms. Geremeskel would have a point. But the RAD went further than that, summarizing the RPD’s findings regarding Ms. Geremeskel’s explanation for not seeking state protection and then concluding:

I find no error on the part of the RPD in its contextual and intersectional approach to the PA’s reluctance to seek state protection in Netherlands. While a few factors are favourable to the PA’s failure to approach the police, such as her level of education, and her abusive relationship with her ex-husband, most of the relevant considerations support that she should reasonably have sought state protection in the Netherlands. As the RPD noted, the evidence suggests that she would not have risked further endangerment in approaching the police. The Appellants had no contact with M while they lived in a shelter, and during this time she successfully arranged her divorce from her ex-husband. This further supports that despite traditional cultural norms regarding reporting of gender-based violence, the PA was able to take clear and decisive steps to end her relationship with M. The Appellants have also not provided evidence of previous negative interactions with the authorities with respect to seeking state protection. As the RPD noted, the Appellants have not shown that mental health issues or M’s profile explain the PA’s reluctance to approach the state.

[16] While the RAD’s reasoning, like the RPD’s, is far from perfect, perfection is not the standard to which administrative decision makers are held under reasonableness review, and Ms. Geremeskel has not established that the reasoning is unintelligible or not transparent, or that the finding is unjustified. The RAD Member clearly turned their mind to the requirements of the Gender Guideline and evaluated the RPD’s reasoning under the same. Ms. Geremeskel has not demonstrated any lack of rationality or analytical error by the RAD but appears simply to assert that a proper application of the Gender Guideline would have weighed factors differently and yielded a different result. This amounts to an invitation to substitute the Court’s analysis of the evidence for that of the RAD Member. That would take the Court beyond the scope of reasonableness review; the invitation must be declined. Ms. Geremeskel has not persuaded me that the RAD failed to apply the Gender Guideline in a reasonable manner.

IV. Conclusion

[17] Notwithstanding the RPD’s and the RAD’s acknowledgment that Ms. Geremeskel is a survivor of gender-based violence who, with her children, experienced serious racial and gender discrimination in the Netherlands, and who faces the prospect of further discrimination if she is required to return, I am unable to find that the RAD’s determination that they would have access to adequate and effective state protection in the Netherlands was unreasonable. While the circumstances facing Ms. Geremeskel and her children may well warrant relief on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, that is a question that the legislature has directed the Minister to decide under section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27.

[18] This application must be dismissed. The parties have not proposed a serious question of general importance for certification, and I agree that none arises.

JUDGMENT in IMM-22397-24

THIS COURT’S JUDGMENT is that:

1. The Application is dismissed.

2. 2.No question is certified.

"Andrew J. Brouwer"

FEDERAL COURT

SOLICITORS OF RECORD

APPEARANCES:

SOLICITORS OF RECORD: