UK domestic law provides for the cancellation of refugee status. Paragraph 338A of the Immigration Rules requires a person’s grant of refugee status to be revoked if any of paragraphs 339A, 339AA, 339AB or 339AC apply.1

Paragraph 339AA requires cancellation of refugee status where the person should have been excluded from being a refugee at the time they were granted such status in accordance with Article 1D, 1E or 1F of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Paragraph 339AB requires cancellation of refugee status where it was obtained fraudulently and where the person’s misrepresentation or omission of facts, including the use of false documents, were decisive for the grant of refugee status. Cancellation will not occur, however, where the person would still qualify for refugee status once the fraudulent aspects of the claim have been disregarded. 

When refugee status is cancelled, the individual ceases to be a recognised refugee and therefore loses the rights attached to refugee status under domestic law. They may, however, be granted an alternative form of immigration status in the UK if returning them to their country of origin would, for example, breach the UK’s non-refoulement obligations notwithstanding they do not qualify as a refugee, or not be in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

• 1Immigration Rules, Part 11: Asylum. Available at:  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-part-11-asylum.