Case summaries

The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees contains a finite list of grounds on which refugee status may be recognised and does not include victims of war, natural disasters, or famine, family situation, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, or poverty.

The assessment of whether the foreignor's fear of persecution is justified must therefore be performed with reference to the individual case in question and in the light of the general social, legal, political, and economic situation of the country of origin of the foreignor applying for refugee status.

The Applicant left his country of origin (Iran) in 2003 having been arrested, illegally detained and tortured because of his participation in demonstrations against the regime in 1999. He told the Committee that he had occasionally participated in the anti-regime activities of Iranians in Greece, and that he did not wish to return to Iran because he feared that he would be imprisoned again and would be subjected to torture. Concerning his religious beliefs, he stated that he was an atheist. The Committee accepted that the torture suffered by the Applicant in his country of origin constituted previous persecution. However, the Committee believed that there was no a well-founded fear of persecution now or in the future because of his prior actions, nor because of his prior actions in conjunction with circumstances which occurred in Greece (participation in Iranian movements), nor even because of the Applicant's atheism and, therefore, that the fear of persecution was not well-founded. Nevertheless, the Committee acknowledged that “there may have been situations in which the Applicant was persecuted in the country of origin, but he has no present or future fear of persecution there. However, it is appropriate to recognise him as a refugee because of the compelling reasons arising from previous persecution, especially when the persecution he suffered was particularly atrocious”; and it unanimously recognised the Applicant's refugee status because it held that the Applicant had suffered terrible persecution in the past because of his anti-regime activities (political opinion) without the situation in his country of origin having since improved, and because the Applicant continued to suffer the consequences of his psychological harm, meaning that his return to Iran and his life there would be intolerable.

The court ordered the Office of Immigration and Nationality to conduct new proceedings. The mere fact that national security risk factors arise vis-à-vis a person is not sufficient reason to exclude them from refugee or subsidiary protection status.

The CGRS (Office of the Commissioner-General for Refugees and Stateless Persons) may not dispute the nationality of an asylum seeker without taking into account the official documents that he has filed.

The Helsinki Supreme Administrative Court decided  that Finland cannot return an Iraqi asylum seeker to Sweden, where he/she faces the risk of being sent back to Baghdad and may be subjected to violations of his/her human rights. The  Supreme Administrative Courtdecided that the ruling of the Finnish Immigration Service had to be reversed and the application for asylum had to be substantively examined in Finland. 

Criminal sanctions against homosexual acts under Article 319 of the Criminal Code of Senegal constitute a deprivation of the fundamental right to live one’s own sexual and emotional life in freedom and are sufficient in themselves to justify granting refugee status.

The concept of a local conflict as referred to in Article 14 of Legislative Decree 251/2007 c) and which is a sufficient reason for granting subsidiary protection should not be understood as applying only to civil war. It should cover all circumstances where conflicts or outbreaks of violence, whatever their origins, between opposing groups or various factions appear to have become permanent and ongoing and widespread, not under the control of the state apparatus or actually benefiting from cultural and political ties with this apparatus.

In a challenge to a decision to refuse subsidiary protection and humanitarian leave to remain, the Court considered the obligation on the decision maker to consider relevant documentation, the obligation to give reasons for a decision to dismiss such evidence, reliance by the Minister on credibility findings by the RAT in denying the earlier application for refugee status and whether an Applicant is required to challenge the RAT findings in a subsequent application for subsidiary protection. The Court found that the Minister had failed to weigh the apparently corroborative documentation against the marginal findings of lack of credibility by the RAT or to give reasons for dismissing or rejecting such documentation.

“If an asylum applicant is shown to be in need, and if it can be expected that an applicant’s fundamental human rights and freedoms would or might be infringed, the administrative authority must give the applicant for asylum or subsidiary protection the benefit of the doubt in relation to the facts stated by the applicant.”

1. The issue as to whether an asylum-seeker was already protected against political persecution in a third country is only relevant in terms of  the asylum application for recognition of refugee status in the context of the concept of the first country of asylum as defined in EU law in Article 29 of the Asylum Procedures Act (Articles 25 and 26 of the Asylum Procedures Directive).  

2. If the Federal Office has reached a decision on the asylum application in this case, the substantive question of the subsidiarity of refugee protection in the assessment of refugee status is no longer applicable.