Case summaries

Subsidiary protection can be granted if on return to their country of origin an applicant would face a real risk of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The question at issue was whether the reasons for such ill-treatment related to Refugee Convention persecution grounds or not. All international protection statuses require an individual threat, which cannot be indirect as the risk assessment is a future oriented examination of the possibility of a threat, along with the applicant’s individual circumstances and the probabilities of risk.

If a subsequent asylum application is based on circumstances which the applicant has created by his own decision, refugee status shall not be granted if the applicant was able to develop his own political conviction at the time of the (termination of the) preceding asylum procedure. This can be assumed to be the case at the age of 16, or at the age of 18 at the latest.

In countries where there is a high prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM), persons who have demonstrated that they oppose this practice have thus infringed the customary norms of their country of origin and therefore can be considered as having a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of membership of a particular social group in the meaning of Article 1A(2)of 1951 Refugee Convention.

Homosexuals in Tunisia, even those that do not proclaim or overtly demonstrate their sexual orientation, can be considered as constituting a specific and sufficiently identifiable whole so as to form a group whose members would face a risk of persecution for reasons of common characteristics which define them in the eyes of the Tunisian authorities and society. 

A woman having undergone female genital mutilation FGM, who benefitted from reconstructive surgery in France, an act considered as an infringement of Guinean customs despite its official ban, must be considered as a member of the social group formed by women who oppose female genital mutilation practiced in Guinea.

The case concerned an appeal against a refusal to grant refugee status on the grounds that the applicant lacked credibility as the country of origin information (COI) submitted by the applicant was not verified by the national documentation service providing COI. 

Insofar as the Migration Office relied on the Applicant’s claim that he was a member of the SCNC and recognised this ground for the purposes of the subsidiary protection procedure without disputing the claim of membership of the SCNC, and insofar as the deliberations on the possibility of serious harm resulting from this membership led to the granting of subsidiary protection, it seems illogical that the Migration Office disputed these grounds in the asylum procedure because of the unreliability of the Applicant’s claim regarding membership, concluded that the Applicant had failed to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on this ground, and thus refused to grant him asylum on this basis. 

It is necessary to distinguish between the legal requirement to register a religious group under the law of the country of origin and enforcing such a registration with reasonable instruments permitted by the law, and the repressive actions of security units or other bodies of public authority towards members of a religious group that represent obvious excesses beyond the sphere of provisions permitted by law and which, at the same time, may, depending on particular circumstances, individually or on a cumulative basis, reach the intensity of persecution.

As soon as one persecution ground (in this case religion) exists and the other conditions for qualifying for refugee status are fulfilled, refugee status must be recognised rather than subsidiary protection, including in a context of generalised violence. 

This case concerned an appeal against a decision of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) refusing a claim for international protection from a Kosovan applicant who argued that his special skill as a kick boxer would place him within the meaning of a particular social group and that he should be afforded the protection within the Refugee Convention. It was found that the applicant did not belong to any particular social group and he could find protection in his country of origin.