Case summaries
The situation of the homosexuals which currently prevails in Iraq enables them to be considered as forming a group whose members are likely to face acts of such gravity that they may amount to persecution in the meaning of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
A female applicant from Syria belonging to a minority group was eligible for refugee protection based on the lack of fundamental rights and freedoms for the minority to which she belonged, in addition to her political activities.
Art 10.1 (b) of the Qualification Directive guarantees wide reaching protection of the freedom of religion. However, merely belonging to the Ahmadiyya religious community does not justify the granting of refugee status.
The applicant lodged an appeal before the Supreme Court against the High National Court’s decision to reject her asylum application. She claimed to have experienced persecution in Nigeria for religious reasons: her parents were killed in a religious confrontation between Muslims and Catholics. However, she did not explain how this fact was linked to a subsequent persecution. The Court held that the applicant was not a victim of religious persecution in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention, but that she had fled from a general conflict and a situation of political instability.
Homosexuals in Morocco form a social group within the meaning of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention for reasons of common characteristics which define them in the eyes of Moroccan criminal law and society.
The Court held that the conditions for offering the Applicants temporary judicial protection had been satisfied, taking into consideration that the Asylum Committee had rejected the asylum-seeker's claims as being unsubstantiated without assessing his credibility, and also because the decision which rejected the application for asylum only vaguely referred to the prevailing situation in Iran.
A HIV-infected person cannot be granted a residence permit in Sweden on medical grounds if health care and medicines are available in the home country, even if the person has financial difficulties and has to pay for treatment himself/herself. The economic consequences of doing so for Sweden must be taken into consideration in the decision. Further, that an assessment of whether an applicant risks being prevented from getting adequate care because of their political opinions should be made in the context of examining the need for protection and not as part of an assessment of whether there are any particularly distressing circumstances.
Currently every Sunnite and Shiite from Central and South Iraq is to be considered as a refugee within the meaning of Section 60 (1) Residence Act and the 1951 Refugee Convention, if he/she originates from a region with mixed denominations.
Returnees who originate from regions of mixed denominations cannot obtain internal protection in any part of Iraq.
For the purposes of assessing whether a child is a member of a particular social group, a person's age is an immutable characteristic.
In order to assess the persecution fears of a person in case of return to his/her country of origin, concrete modes in which such a return will most likely take place must be taken into consideration.