Case summaries

The Court considered whether an application for international protection by an applicant of Russian nationality based on experiences of persecution in Lithuania (country of asylum) could be dismissed based on the reasoning that Lithuania is deemed to be a safe country of asylum. The Administrative Court held that the question of whether the applicants are in need of international protection based on the treatment they have received in their country of asylum, Lithuania, could not be examined in an asylum procedure in Lithuania.

UK domestic legislation that deemed that EU member states were safe third countries for the purposes of removal under the Dublin Regulation was not, as a matter of course, incompatible with Article 3 ECHR and the Human Rights Act 1998. However, if the applicant could show that his or her rights under Article 3 ECHR would be breached by his or her removal to Greece, a declaration of incompatibility between the legislation and the Human Rights Act would be made, although the Court would be prevented from finding that the removal would breach the applicant’s rights.  However, the evidence combined with the ECtHR’s ruling in KRS v. UK was not sufficient to indicate that there was such a risk and, in any event, the applicant could seek the protection of the ECtHR in Greece.

1. The denial of citizenship may represent a severe violation of basic human rights according to Art. 9.1 (a) of the Qualification Directive.
2. In assessing the severity of the violation of rights caused by the denial of citizenship, under Art. 4.3 of the Qualification Directive, the individual situation and personal circumstances of the person concerned have to be taken into account.
3. A person is stateless according to Section 3 (1) of the Asylum Procedure Act, if no state considers him/her as a national under its own law, i.e. a de jure stateless person. For de-facto stateless persons, therefore, a threat of persecution has to be established with reference to the state of their de jure nationality.
4. The habitual residence of a stateless person under Section 3 (1) of the Asylum Procedure Act does not need to be lawful. It is sufficient if the focus of the stateless person’s life is in the country, and therefore the stateless person did not merely spend a short time there, and the competent authorities did not initiate measures to terminate his/her residence.

The applicant challenged his transfer to Greece from the UK under the Dublin II Regulation, on the basis that the situation for asylum seekers in Greece would lead to a violation of Article 3 ECHR. The Court declared the application manifestly ill-founded and therefore inadmissible, as it was presumed that Greece would comply with its obligations and would not refoule him to his county of origin Iraq. 

The Court of Appeal considered a piece of legislation that required judges and decision-makers to “take into account, as damaging” to an asylum application’s credibility, certain specified behaviour, including the failure to claim asylum in a safe third country. The Court held that the relevant legislation must be interpreted in a way which is consistent with constitutional principles and which allowed the judiciary to make a global assessment of credibility in the individual case. If the legislation was interpreted as a direction it would risk distorting the fact-finding exercise conducted by the judiciary.

The concept of internal protection only applies if the asylum-seeker is able to reach the relevant region in a reasonable manner. In the light of Art 8 of the Qualification Directive an asylum-seeker can only be reasonably expected to stay in another part of his country of origin if he does not face risks in this region. The general situation in the region of internal protection and the applicant’s personal circumstances has to be taken into account. It is irrelevant for the granting of refugee status whether such risks likewise exist in the region of origin.

In assessing whether a state is a safe third country with regard to its interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it was not sufficient to assess whether the foreign state’s interpretation of the Convention was reasonable. The Secretary of State for the Home Department had to be satisfied that the foreign state applied the one true interpretation of the Convention decided upon by the UK Courts.