Case summaries

Courts must establish the current situation of the region from which the complainant originates and relate it to the individual situation of the complainant in the grounds of the decision.

In the case of an Afghan family, the lower instance court did not sufficiently consider the security situation in the complainants’ country of origin, in particular with regard to the situation for minors. Thereby the court violated the right to equal treatment among foreigners.

The fact that an asylum seeker has already been persecuted in the past or has been subject to direct threats of persecution, was considered as a well-founded argument to believe that the applicant would face the risk to be persecuted under Article 1, Section A §2 of the 1951 Refugee Convention.  

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the removal of families belonging to the Sikh religious minority to Afghanistan would not constitute a violation of Article 3 ECHR, as the applicants’ situation failed to reach the severity threshold required by this Article. Despite the fact that the Sikh community suffers from intimidation and intolerance within the Afghan society, the Court did not find that this group is the target of a practice of a systematic practice of ill-treatment, despite any difficulties they may be facing in the country.

The applicants’ personal circumstances and the general conditions in the country of origin have to be taken into account, when assessing whether an internal flight alternative exists. Relevant sources like the UNHCR guidelines have to be used.  Otherwise this constitutes a significant procedural error. 

The Belgian authorities carried out a reasonable assessment, balancing the risk to public safety with the applicant’s mental health, in deciding the applicant’s detention. The duration and medical care provided in detention were lawful and justified.

A Member State cannot rely on the rebuttable presumption under Articles 36 and 37 of the 2013 Asylum Procedures Directive (APD) in respect of the safe country of origin concept and subsequently find the application to be manifestly unfounded in accordance with Article 31(8)(b) without having fully implemented and complied with the procedures under the APD relating to the designation of countries as safe countries of origin.

Moreover, a Member State may not consider an application for asylum as manifestly unfounded under the APD due to the insufficiency of the applicant’s representations. 

After being notified of his return decision, set to take place on the same day, the applicant requested an interim measure on Article 3 ECHR grounds in the morning but was nonetheless expelled to Morocco in the afternoon. The Court found no violation of Article 3, regarding the applicant’s expulsion to Morocco, by taking into account subsequent information. It found a violation of Article 34 of the Convention, owing to the fact that the applicant had no sufficient time to file a request to the Court, hence running the risk back then of being potentially subjected to treatment prohibited by the Convention.

The applicant, an Algerian national convicted in France for terrorism and banned from entering French territory in 2006, was sent back to Algeria in 2014, on the day he was notified of the rejection of his asylum claim and of the issuance of his return order. The Court found that the French authorities violated Article 34 of the Convention by carrying out the applicant’s transfer despite the Court’s interim measure. It also found that France violated Article 3, in the light of the general information regarding the situation of people suspected of international terrorism in Algeria.

The request submitted by the Italian authorities to Norway to take back the applicant would imply his immediate repatriation to his country of origin, Afghanistan, which, in the light of the Court’s reasoning, is not to be considered a safe country.

The judicial examination of whether subsidiary protection shall be approved requires a thorough assessment of the individual case. This applies in particular for especially vulnerable persons.