Case summaries

A decision by the State Secretary for Security and Justice (the “State Secretary”) of the Netherlands will be in violation of: (i) Article 3.37e of the Foreigners Regulation 2000 if such decision, regarding whether a country qualifies as a safe third country, is not based on several information sources; and/or, (ii) Articles 3.2 and 3.46 of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act on the basis that all decisions of the State Secretary are required to (a) be carefully prepared and (b) include a decisive motivation.

The applicant appealed against a deportation order on account of the high risk that he faced of being subject to treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR in the case of return to Russia.

This case dealt with the issue of whether the Secretary of State’s certification of the asylum claims of the two independent applicants as “clearly unfounded” was flawed on public law grounds, and the important difference between a decision on refugee status itself and a decision on a claim being “clearly unfounded”.
 

The return of a third country national woman or girl to a country where female genital mutilation is traditionally practised is not a breach of Art. 3 of the Convention where her family (including her possible husband) has the will and the possibility to ensure that she will not be subjected to that practice. 

The Italian consolidated Law on Migration (Art. 5(6) n. 286/1998) requires humanitarian protection to be given where a person is in a situation of vulnerability. Such a situation occurs when the applicant’s constitutional and international fundamental rights, such as health and nutrition, are compromised.

The Court found a violation of Articles 3 and 5(4) ECHR in relation to the Applicant’s detention conditions at Fylakio and Aspropyrgos, and the shortcomings of domestic law in relation to the judicial review of his detention. 

The Court found a violation of Article 3 in relation to a subsequent application for asylum, which had been rejected on the basis that it contained no new elements indicating that the Applicants ran a real risk of being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment on deportation to Russia. Because new information had in fact been provided, the national authorities were under an obligation to thoroughly review the information in order to assure themselves that the Applicants’ rights under Article 3 would be safeguarded.

This case is concerned with whether the Secretary of State for Justice has discharged or breached his duty of care with regards to the risk of refoulement in an asylum application.

The applicants, a stateless Palestinian from Syria and two Syrian nationals, had been ordered to be expelled to Syria by the Russian authorities, and were detained in a detention centre in Russia pending this. The Court found that their expulsion to Syria would breach Articles 2 and 3, that Articles 5(4) and 5(1)(f) had been violated with regards to their detention, and that the restrictions on their contact with their representatives had breached Article 34.

In this case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) revisited the conditions of Mogadishu, Somalia as it relates to an alleged violation of Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

In the specific case, the ECtHR held that:

1) While the general conditions of Mogadisuh remain serious and fragile, objective reports support the finding that such conditions are not sufficient to find a violation of Article 3 of the ECHR; and

2) While the ECtHR acknowledged that the applicant in the present case faces a different threat as a woman and that several objective reports described the serious and widespread sexual and gender-based violence in the country, the Court was concerned with the applicant’s credibility.