Case summaries
The accelerated procedure (in this case, applicants from a safe country of origin) guarantees the individual assessment of the applicant’s situation and their right to a remedy with suspensive effect.
Even if an asylum applicant meets the conditions for provding subsidiary protection, he will be excluded from eligibility for subsidiary protection if there are serious grounds for believing that he represents a danger to society or a danger to the Member State in which he is staying.
It follows from the decision of the European Court of Human Rights that signatory states to the Convention (Convention for theProtection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) are under an obligation not to hand over/deport a person to a country where he might be at risk of treatment which is contrary to Article 3 of the Convention. In the case in question, however, the subject of the judicial review was not the decision to deport the Appellant, but the Respondent’s decision not to grant asylum and not to provide subsidiary protection as requested by the Appellant.
The revocation of refugee status in the case of a Kurd from Iraq was upheld: Even if one presumes that an internal armed conflict is taking place in the applicant’s home province (Tamim), it cannot be assumed that the indiscriminate violence has reached such a high level that practically any civilian is at risk of a serious and individual threat simply by his or her presence in the region.
Documents that only serve to prove facts and situations that have been invoked in earlier procedures and/or to refute the reasons for rejection in earlier decisions, are not new elements within the meaning of Art 51/8 of the Belgian Aliens Law (please see comments section below).
Membership of an organisation that was responsible for committing war crimes is not sufficient on its own to justify exclusion under Article 1F(a) of the Refugee Convention or Article 12(2)(a) of the Qualification Directive. Membership of the LTTE or its ‘Intelligence Division” was not enough, on its own, to justify the applicant’s exclusion.
Responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity should be considered with regard to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and other international legal materials that have come into existence following the adoption of the Refugee Convention.
The decision maker should concentrate on the actual role played by the particular persons, taking all material aspects of that role into account so as to decide whether the required degree of participation is established. The Court identified a non-exhaustive list of some of the relevant factors that should be considered.
Sexual violence, assault and forced prostitution was not considered sufficient for subsidiary protection to be granted since it had not been shown that the authorities lacked will or were unable to offer protection.
The failure to respect the procedural guarantees provided under Article 3.4 of the Dublin II Regulation constitutes a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the right of asylum.
A single woman from Nigeria (Urhobo) was eligible for protection from deportation under Section 60 (7) sentence (1) of the Residence Act due to a threat of female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage. The economic and social situation in Nigeria is difficult and tense even for the vast majority of the population. The situation is much worse for single women as women in Nigeria are exposed to multiple discrimination. To a large extent they are under legal incapacity, so that in practice they are only in a position to protect their own interests if they are supported by their family.
(1) be new, i.e. not have been subject to examination in an earlier procedure;
The situation which currently prevails in the region of Mosul, as well as in the whole territory of Iraq, can no longer be considered as a situation of armed conflict, within the meaning of Article L.712-1 c) of Ceseda [which transposes Article 15 (c) of the Qualification Directive].