Mujaj (Deprivation: children's best interests) Albania [2025] UKUT 349 (IAC) (25 July 2025)

Executive summary

The Upper Tribunal remade the deprivation appeals of Flamur Mujaj and Ermira Mujaj, both Albanian-born adults who had obtained British citizenship in false identities, and addressed how the best interests of their children had to be assessed in that context. It set out a six-step approach for deprivation appeals involving children, distinguishing between issues governed by public-law review of the Secretary of State’s section 55 duty and issues the tribunal must decide for itself under article 8.

Key points

• Parties: Flamur Mujaj and Ermira Mujaj v Secretary of State for the Home Department; both appellants were deprived of British citizenship for obtaining it by deception.
• Holding: the tribunal stated the correct method for assessing children’s best interests in deprivation appeals, including when to review the Secretary of State’s section 55 compliance and when to make independent findings.
• Reasoning: section 55 is mainly relevant to discretion and article 8; the tribunal must identify the respondent’s reasons, assess materiality of any section 55 error, and separately determine the best interests of any relevant child as a primary consideration.
• Facts relied on: the couple had four British citizen children; at the deprivation decisions’ dates the three eldest were adults or near-adults, and the youngest was a minor.
• Open justice: the tribunal lifted the anonymity order, reasoning that public interest in open justice outweighed the privacy interests of the appellants and their children, only one of whom remained a minor.
• Sanctions/export-control angle: none apparent from the judgment; it is an immigration/nationality case, not a sanctions or export-controls decision.

Why it matters

The decision clarifies the tribunal’s analytical framework for cases where deprivation of citizenship may affect children, which is relevant to sovereign-risk and state power because it sharpens how discretionary nationality powers are judicially reviewed. It does not concern sanctions, export controls, or national security measures directly, but it is useful for understanding the limits of administrative discretion and proportionality review in high-consequence status cases.

Implications

For litigation strategy, appellants and the Home Office must separate section 55/public-law challenges from article 8 merits questions and address all reasons given in the deprivation decision, including any later review or reconsideration where procedurally fair. For compliance and enforcement, the case signals that deprivation decisions affecting families must explicitly grapple with children’s interests at the correct stage, but that a section 55 flaw will only matter if it is material to the outcome.