Case summaries
The applicant’ s description of a situation which gives rise to a risk to his life or physical integrity, deriving from gender-based violence, social or religious group violence, family/domestic violence, which is accepted, tolerated or not tackled by the State, imposes an ex proprio motu further investigation upon the Judiciary. The latter entails an investigation into the control of violence described by the applicant in terms of whether it is widespread, whether there is impunity for the acts as well as the State’s response
The Migration Court committed serious breaches of procedure in an asylum case (in which grounds arising sur place were cited), as the Court failed to respond to all requests, state its assessment of political activity sur place, or communicate important written documents.
It is impossible to advise the Applicant to request the protection of public bodies in a situation in which the public bodies obviously discriminate against a certain religious group. When examining the alternative option of internal relocation, it is necessary to assess the legal and factual availability in terms of the circumstances of the Applicant. It is impossible to build the protection proceedings on a testimony with partial inaccuracies and to revert to translated reports provided by the Applicant.
This case involved a violation of the right to equal treatment of foreigners as a result of a rejection of the application for international protection and expulsion of the homosexual Applicant to Nigeria because of a failure by the decision-maker to make its own country determinations and to thoroughly examine the situation of homosexuals in Nigeria.
There has been a violation of Article 47 (2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union if there is a failure to hold a hearing at the Asylum Court, notwithstanding that the facts of the case are not sufficiently clear. Merely general statements without reference to the case in point do not represent sufficient grounds for the lack of credibility of the submission.
A Somalian citizen, claiming to be from Mogadishu, had applied for international protection due to the lack of safety in his/her native country and human rights violations infringements in Mogadishu. According to his/her language assessment, he/she clearly didn’t speak the Somalian spoken in Southern Somalia but manifestly spoke the Somalian spoken in Northern Somalia. The language assessment alone was not considered to be enough proof of domicile but taking into account his/her scant local knowledge of Mogadishu and partially contradictory accounts, it was deemed that he/she in fact was from Northern Somalia, Somaliland. According to the report, the appellant and his/her underage children whom he/she brought along to Finland were not in need of international protection.
Transferring the major part of the investigations into the facts of an asylum application to the Court of Second Instance impedes the purpose of an appeal stage. As a specialist authority, the Federal Asylum Agency is obliged to keep up to date with relevant developments under asylum law. Both the departure clause reasons and previous acts of persecution are to be taken into consideration in a decision. With regard to Pakistani members of the Ahmadiyya religious community, the decision by the CJEU in C-71/11 and C-99/11, Federal Republic of Germany v. Y and Z and the right to practise religion in public are to be taken into account.
Three Somali girls were considered to have a well-founded fear of being forced to undergo female genital mutilation and therefore gender-based persecution, which entitled them to be granted refugee status.
The Procedures Directive does not apply to subsidiary protection decisions when a Member State, such as Ireland, does not have a unified asylum procedure.
Country of origin information must be up-to-date and balanced. A report of the European Commission evaluating Turkey as potential member of the EU is political and biased, and should only be used as a supporting document.