Case summaries

Before granting subsidiary protection under Article L.712-1 c) Ceseda [which corresponds to Article 15 (c) of the Qualification Directive] to an applicant originating from the Congo, the Court had to inquire whether the situation of general insecurity which prevails in this country results from a situation of internal or international armed conflict.

Subsidiary protection can only be granted if all the criteria for qualifying as a refugee are not fulfilled.

The Court considered how to assess whether an applicant’s activities for insurgent groups in Afghanistan could constitute terrorism. It further considered whether attacks upon United Nations Security Council mandated forces, such as ISAF in Afghanistan, were acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations, justifying exclusion from the 1951 Refugee Convention under Article 1F(c).

The Immigration Service refused an application for asylum deeming the application unfounded as the applicant had mainly based her claim for asylum on economic grounds. The applicant was taken into the System of Victim Assistance during the appeal stage on suspicion the applicant was a victim of trafficking. The Administrative Court held that in line with the Immigration Service’s decision, the application was deemed manifestly unfounded, but due to a suspicion the applicant was a victim of trafficking, returned the case to the Immigration Service for re-examination.

When medico-legal evidence of torture is provided by specialists and found credible it is incumbent on the Migration Board to put forward evidence that there is no further risk of torture in the relevant country. 

The existence of a risk of persecution in the country of origin should be assessed on the basis of information concerning the country of origin rather than on the basis of the credibility of the asylum seeker.

The group of “Iraqi citizens who cooperate with the coalition forces” in Iraq is not to be characterised as a “social group” within the meaning of the Qualification Directive (confirmation of decision of Administrative Court of Karlsruhe of the 16 April 2010, A 10 K 523/08). It cannot be assumed that any kind of cooperation with the coalition forces is an expression of a certain political conviction or that Islamist terrorist organisations would have an understanding of this kind of cooperation.

This case concerns a revocation decision, which turned on the meaning of Art 14.3(b) of the Qualification Directive (in particular the word “decisive” in that Article). The Court relied on an analysis of the French and Italian translations of Art 14.3, which the court felt were not worded as precisely as the English text.

For conversion to be considered an acceptable protection ground the religious belief must be genuine.

Converts to Christianity in Afghanistan face a general risk of persecution and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment on return. However, the Migration Court of Appeal found that an Afghan applicant did not prove it was reasonably likely that his conversion from Islam to Christianity was founded on a genuine belief. He had not shown that if he returned to his country of origin he had the intention to live as a convert. There was also no evidence that the authorities in his country of origin knew that he had converted.

The Administrative Court returned the case to the Finnish Immigration Service for re-examination as the Immigration Service had not given sufficient reasons for its decision and had used only a limited amount of country of origin information. Additionally new evidence had been presented in the case during the appeal, which had not been taken into account during the decision making process.