Mystery surrounds how a run-away Zimbabwean teen, who was only in transit in London, ended up in the care of the London Borough of *****n UK for almost 12 months and how the UK managed to claim jurisdiction of the matter. Jurisdiction is the lawful right for the UK to decide where the Zimbabwean boy shall live and with whom. Has the boy been kept in care and in the UK unlawfully? In order for the LB of *****n to lawfully make decisions on behalf of his boy he would either have to be an unaccompanied asylum seeker or to have no habitual residence anywhere outside of the UK.
The teen, when asked how he had landed in care in the UK, stated,
“My mother took me to Zurich airport on 26 April 2015 and I flew to Birmingham airport where my cousin met me. I am not a UK citizen or a UK permanent resident. I just flew in as a tourist.
“My trip had been pre-arranged and I did not arrive alone at the Birmingham airport as my cousin was waiting for me. After spending some days with him in Birmingham, I travelled with him and his friend to London to stay with his sister.

“By that time my mother had joined me in London.
“On 03 May 2015 we had a family conference about me at my cousin’s house as my mom and I had different views regarding where I wanted to go and live since our residency permit for Switzerland had expired. I told my family members at the family conference that I did not want to go to live in Zimbabwe at that time. I preferred to go back instead to the more liberal environment in Switzerland. I absconded on 05 May 2016 in London and my mother reported me as a missing person to the police because she feared that I was going to make my way back to Switzerland alone. On 08 May 2015 my mother tried to retrieve my passport from me to prevent me from absconding and it got torn in the process. She did not actually assault me e.g. kick me. But then I remembered what I had been advised to do in Switzerland i.e. to tell lies about my mother to get my own way; so when my passport got torn I instructed my cousin to phone the police. When the police came I lied to the police and said that my mother had kicked me. My mother spent the day at the police station, she was bailed on condition she had no contact with me for a month. The police picked me up and kept me for 72 hours. Since my mom could not take me back into her care because of the imposed bail condition, the police had no option but to hand me over to social services and that is how I went into care”
According to the mother, she had tried in vain to retrieve her son before the 72 hours had lapsed but she had been told that this was not possible due to the imposed bail conditions. However, when the bail conditions lapsed and the teen’s mother applied for the interim care order to be discharged, her application to discharge the interim care order was refused.
So how exactly did the UK justify taking the tourist teen into their care and keeping him in care? The judgement passed down by Mr Justice Cobb read,
“This reasoned judgment leads to the conclusion that the English Court does have jurisdiction. I have concluded on the evidence that it is not possible to establish NH’s habitual residence; jurisdiction is founded merely upon NH’s physical presence in England. I recognise that I am, in these circumstances, exercising a “jurisdiction of necessity” (as it is so described by Paul Lagarde in his 1997 Explanatory Report to the 1996 Child Protection Convention, see [45]) enabling me to make substantive orders in relation to NH. I readily acknowledge that NH’s connections with England are tenuous and, according to NH’s Guardian, NH enjoys no “affinity” with this country. My conclusion follows, however, a careful review and application of the key provisions of the Hague Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-Operation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children (“the 1996 Child Protection Convention”).
It will, I consider, be a relatively rare case where it is impossible to establish a child’s habitual residence; such a conclusion is likely to reflect a material level of rootlessness in a child, which is not common and may indeed be indicative of some interference with the child’s emotional and/or physical welfare and development. It would be wrong for me to strain to find facts to establish a habitual residence simply to achieve an outcome more generally contemplated by the 1996 Convention, particularly where the potential target of the determination is a country which does not itself support that conclusion.
The 1996 Child Protection Convention, like BIIa, is designed to ensure that States which have only tenuous connections with a child do not generally assume jurisdiction to make welfare-based decisions for that child. As indicated above, Article 6(2) will only ever establish a jurisdiction of necessity. But this is such a case.”
In other words, the teen was declared to have no habitual residency because he was a tourist in transit from Switzerland to Zimbabwe via South Africa. At the time his passport got torn, the UK authorities argued that the teen had no habitual residency.
Two issues that have plagued this controversial case seem to be that of Jurisdiction and Threshold. The run-away teen claims that the UK authorities stole Zimbabwe’s Jurisdiction through lies and coercion. His mother claims the UK never had the jurisdiction for keeping her son in care. When asked to elaborate on this, the beleaguered teen narrated,
“I was fully aware for a long time before I flew to Birmingham last April that we had lost our right to live in Switzerland and that my mother was making arrangement for us to move to our permanent home in Zimbabwe. I knew that my mother had established a permanent home for us in Zimbabwe in 2013 and that she had set up 2 businesses there to support us when we made a permanent move to Zimbabwe. In the home my mother had built for us I have my own bedroom. During the 2 years before I came to England last April I split my time between Zimbabwe and Switzerland. Half of my clothes and possessions were in our rented home in Switzerland and the other half of my clothes and possessions were in our permanent home that my mother had built in Zimbabwe. In fact, I had even attended a boarding school for one year in Harare in 2013-2014 and spent part of my school holidays at our home in Zimbabwe. I was therefore not homeless when I came to England to visit my cousin, I had merely gone from having 2 homes to having one permanent home only in Zimbabwe. We had flight tickets with us in London to travel on to South Africa on 8 May 2015 and then Zimbabwe”.
So why then, did he tell the UK social services and courts that he had no home in Zimbabwe? Here is the catch:-
“My social worker, **** ****** and my solicitor, Gordon Reed, told me that I was 15 and that I had the right to be listened to and that they would help me defy my family and get me what I wanted at that time. Initially, I lied that my mom had kicked me so that I could get what I wanted. But after that, my solicitor went and wrote other things that I had not said which made it look like my mom had badly physically assaulted me. Then my solicitor went and submitted a statement in court, without consulting with me, stating that I had said I never had two homes in the past two years. I never ever said that as I have always known that we had two homes since 2013”. The teen went on to say, “My solicitor also told me to lie to Mr Justice Cobb and say that I was gay/bi-sexual when I am not, he said that by saying this it would help me get to Canada instead of being sent home to live with my mother in Zimbabwe. I am not gay, I have never been gay and I have never been bi-sexual. I was told by my solicitor and my Social Worker to lie if I wanted to get my own way; they encouraged me to do this. As well as finding people to follow me around and harass me chanting slurs like “he`s trying to be gay, no, he cannot go to live in Zimbabwe””
The UK clearly has no Jurisdiction, since the teen has stated that (1) He did not arrive alone in the UK and can therefore not be classified as an abandoned child in the UK; (2) He did not seek asylum and (3) he was not habitually homeless as he was due to fly out of the UK on 8 May 2015 to travel to his home.
The teen has stated that his solicitor fabricated stories about him (in a statement to a UK court) having had no dual residency the two years prior to him flying to the UK so that a UK judge could lawfully make decisions concerning this teen because the Judge had jurisdiction. The teen is unlawfully in care. The teen has submitted an extensive statement to the court explaining why he ran away from court on 05 April 2016, how he suffered whilst in the care of the UK authorities and how his solicitor and social worker coerced him and fabricated lies and, the teen did this after his doctor had declared that he had mental capacity. Despite the fact that no UK judge has the lawful right to make any decisions re this teen, due to lack of jurisdiction, the teen is prepared to testify in court, via video link that he has not been coerced to make the statements that he has made and that all he wants is that he and his mom are guaranteed safe passage to Zimbabwe.
So on what basis is the UK still claiming it has the Jurisdiction to make decisions for this teen?