An appeals tribunal has found that a Malawi man is not gay despite the man showing photographs of himself attending a Pride parade and his participation in a Galway LGBTQI+ organisation.In the case, a High Court judge has refused the man an application to judicially review (JR) a decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (Ipat) affirming a recommendation that the man be refused refugee status and subsequent decisions by the Minister of Justice Jim O’Callaghan in May this year refusing the man international protection and permission to remain. The man was seeking international protection here after claiming that he is gay and asserted that he suffered violence and threats in Malawi on account of his sexual orientation.The man – born in 1998 – claims to have been assaulted in his youth after the discovery of a same-sex relationship and later threatened by the parents of a male partner.In a High Court ruling, Judge Siobhán Phelan has refused the application for a judicial review of the Ipat decision made in April.Phelan stated that the Ipat identified a series of inconsistencies and implausible elements which it regarded as undermining the applicant’s claim that he is a gay man and that he had suffered persecution in Malawi on that basis.Phelan stated that none of the grounds advanced disclose an arguable legal error of sufficient substance to satisfy the threshold for a High Court judicial review.In her 15-page ruling, the judge records that before the Ipat, the applicant relied upon evidence of participation in LGBTQI+ events and organisations in Ireland, including photographs showing attendance at Pride events, a letter from a named Irish LGBT group and certificates of participation in community activities. The judge said the Ipat rejected the applicant’s claim that he is a gay man, finding significant inconsistencies in the chronology and circumstances of the relationships and incidents relied upon as constituting persecution. She stated that the tribunal accepted that the applicant participated in activities organised by LGBTQI+ groups in Ireland, “but concluded that such participation did not establish, on the balance of probabilities, that he was gay”.In her judgment, Phelan found that the Ipat’s conclusion was that such involvement with LGBTQI+ organisations in Ireland did not satisfactorily resolve the credibility concerns already identified regarding the applicant’s account of his sexual orientation and experiences in Malawi. Rejecting the JR application on this ground, Phelan said she was not persuaded that substantial grounds are established for contending that the Ipat reasoning is inadequate in that it fails to convey why the claim was rejected or precludes a review of the sustainability of the decision reached.Phelan also said it is clear from the Ipat decision as a whole that the Ipat did not find Malawi safe for gay men. She said: “Instead, it found the applicant had not proved he was within that class”, adding that the adverse credibility finding was based on personal, internal inconsistencies.