• 316 results found
Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Croatia
Date of decision:

The applicant had renounced his Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship after having received an assurance that he would obtain Croatian citizenship, and became stateless. However, Croatia subsequently refused his citizenship application on national security grounds, without providing the reasons for this decision. He was issued an expulsion order and his permanent residence was terminated. While the applicant was in immigration detention, his Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship was restored and he left Croatia voluntarily. The Court found that the limitation in the applicant’s procedural rights in his expulsion proceedings had not protected him against arbitrariness, and found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol n. 7. The remaining complaints were either found inadmissible or were not examined by the Court.

Court name: District Court Zeeland West-Brabant
Date of decision:

This case concerns the refusal of a municipality to grant Dutch nationality to an undocumented, stateless child born in the Netherlands and who has always lived in the country, because the child had not been residing lawfully in the country for at least three years, as provided by the applicable law. The Dutch court ruled that the refusal should be set aside and nationality granted. The court found that according to the 1961 Convention, only habitual residence is required. It notes that the amended Dutch Nationality Act, in force since October 2023, only provides for the requirement of habitual residence and no longer imposes a lawful residence requirement, and therefore this condition should not have been applied in this case, as it is contrary to international law

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
Date of decision:

The applicant is a stateless person of Palestinian origin who was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He applied for protection in the UK on several grounds, including that he was at risk of harm in breach of Article 3 ECHR because of attempts to recruit him to extremist armed factions in the camp, but his application was rejected. The ECtHR accepted that there was no risk in case of return to Lebanon, and found no information supporting the applicant’s argument in a EUAA (former EASO) report regarding the recruitment of young Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon. The Court found no violation of Article 3 ECHR.

Court name: Court of Justice of the European Union
State: Denmark
Date of decision:

The case concerns the loss of Danish nationality by the applicant who was born outside Denmark to a Danish mother and had spent less than a year in Denmark prior to her 22nd birthday, in accordance with the Law of Danish Nationality. The Court held that Article 20 TFEU, read in conjunction with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, did not preclude such legislation by Member States, provided that the persons concerned had the opportunity to lodge, within a reasonable period, an application for the retention or recovery of nationality, for the authorities to examine the proportionality of the consequences of the loss of nationality from the perspective of EU law, and allow the retention or recovery of nationality. However, the period must extend for a reasonable time beyond the date by which the person concerned reaches the age stated in the legislation, and cannot begin to run unless the authorities have informed the person of the loss of nationality, and the right to apply for the maintenance or recovery of nationality.

Court name: Administrative Court of Luxembourg
State: Luxembourg
Date of decision:

The applicant’s application for statelessness status was denied (both in first and second instance) due to a lack of sufficient proof to determine a difficulty in establishing a nationality, paired with a substantial lack of cooperation of the applicant with the authorities. The Court ruled that the applicant, of Kurdish origin, did not provide coherent and sufficient evidence to support his application.

Court name: Administrative Court of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
State: Luxembourg
Date of decision:

The applicant’s application for statelessness status was denied due to the lack of sufficient proof to determine a difficulty in establishing a nationality, paired with a substantial lack of cooperation of the applicant with the authorities. The Court ruled that the applicant, declaring being of Somalian origin but eventually confirmed of unknown origin, did not provide coherent and sufficient evidence to support his application.

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The Court found a violation of Article 8, in a groundbreaking case regarding children’s right to a birth certificate. The applicant was born in Mexico and repatriated to Spain after an earthquake. Despite his mother’s attempts, his birth was not registered upon arrival in Spain as the necessary documentation had been destroyed by the earthquake in Mexico, and he was issued with an ID card only at 21. The Court found that, upon becoming aware of the situation, Spanish authorities were under a positive obligation to assist the applicant in obtaining documentation and the failure to do so resulted in a violation of Article 8 ECHR.

Court name: Supreme Court of Cyprus
State: Cyprus
Date of decision:

The case was brought to the Supreme Court by 16 individuals who are descendants of a Cypriot citizen and a Turkish citizen, claiming that they applied to register as citizens of Cyprus but never received a response from the authorities. They argued that they are stateless and that Cyprus failed to grant them Cypriot citizenship. The Supreme Court noted the adverse consequences of statelessness, referring to jurisprudence of the ECtHR, but found that all but one applicant are Turkish citizens. For all applicants, the Court concluded that the authorities’ failure to respond to the citizenship applications fell under the jurisdiction of the Administrative Court, and thus rejected the applications.

Court name: Swiss Federal Court (BGer)
Date of decision:

The asylum application submitted by a refugee of Palestinian origin with Syrian travel document was rejected and the applicant was provisionally admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal has proven unreasonable. The applicant and his family submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness. The Swiss Federal Court recognised the statelessness of Palestinian refugees from Syria, for whom UNRWA protection or assistance is objectively no longer accessible.

Court name: Swiss Federal Court (BGer)
Date of decision:

The asylum application filed by applicants of unknown nationality of Palestinian origin with Syrians travel documents was rejected and the applicants were temporarily admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal had proven unreasonable. The refugees submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness, which was approved by the Swiss Federal Court. The Swiss Federal Court assessed the legitimate interest of the request and specified the legal requirements and advantages of being recognised a stateless person, to which temporarily admitted persons would not be entitled.

Court name: Committee on the Rights of the Child
State: Spain
Date of decision:

Eight children of Moroccan nationality born and raised in Melilla, a Spanish enclave city in Morocco, to migrant parents, who had irregular administrative status submitted four different communications to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Even though the children had the right to attend public school by law, they were unable to access public education in Melilla in practice, because they were requested to provide documents that were difficult or impossible to obtain given their irregular administrative status. The Committee on the Rights of the Child found that Spain had violated the applicants’ right to non-discrimination and to education under Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, read in conjunction with Article 28, and Article 6 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure.

Court name: Court of The Hague
Date of decision:

The case concerns an appeal against the Dutch authorities for not taking a decision in time on the applicant's asylum procedure. The court ruled in favour of the applicant and ordered the authorities to issue a decision on the application within eight weeks of the day on which the ruling is sent. Moreover, the court rejected the authorities' argument according to which the applicant was subject to a departure moratorium according to the law for Russian conscripts, given that it was apparent from the record that the authorities assumed that the applicant was stateless. 

Court name: Court of The Hague, location Utrecht
Date of decision:

The case concerns the asylum application in the Netherlands of an applicant claiming to be stateless. The court found that the Dutch authorities erred when they assumed the applicant's name, date of birth and nationality, without sufficiently motivating this decision, despite the applicant's consistent statements on statelessness.

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Denmark
Date of decision:

The applicant is a dual Danish and Algerian national who has been deprived of his Danish nationality and deported from Denmark with a permanent re-entry ban for joining the Islamic State. The applicant claimed a violation of Article 8 ECHR, but the Court found that the Danish decision was not arbitrary. 

Court name: Administrative Court of Appeals of Athens
State: Greece
Date of decision:

The Greek Administration did not err in rejecting the applicant's asylum application as there were no legal grounds in considering that the applicant was a refugee. The applicant, who was a stateless person of Palestinian origin, claimed during his interview that he left his country for economic reasons and in order to find employment, confirming that there were no other reasons forcing him to leave.

Court name: Council of the State
State: Greece
Date of decision:

The Council of State approved the application for interim measures and suspended the deportation order against the applicant, who was born in Palestine and was stateless, according to certain documents on the public record (or a Libyan national based on others). The deportation order (issued due to suspicions that the applicant was a member of Hamas) was found to cause hardly repairable damage to the applicant, while the Hellenic Police had failed to concretely demonstrate why delaying the deportation would harm national security and the public order.  

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Poland
Date of decision:

The applicants are the twin children of an Israeli same-sex couple, born through surrogacy i nthe United States. The case concerns the non-recognition of paternity of the applicants for civil registry and nationality purposes in Poland, whose legal system does not recognise surrogacy. In analysing the applications lodged against Poland regarding the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8) and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14), the Court considered that given the children lived with one biological and one non-biological parent in Israel, had access to fundamental rights there and held dual nationality, Article 8 was not applicable, and hence Article 14 did not apply in conjunction with Article 8 either. Thus, the applications were inadmissible.

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Serbia
Date of decision:

The case concerns the refusal of Serbia for seven years to grant a travel document to the applicant, a Syrian national who had been granted refugee status in Serbia and whose passport expired. This was due to a failure by the Ministry of the Interior to enact regulations that govern the content and design of travel documents for refugees to implement the Asylum Act, which prevented the applicant from travelling outside Serbia for several years. Finding that this refusal curtailed the applicant’s right to leave Serbia freely, to the extent that it impaired the essence of this right and deprived it of its effectiveness, the Court found a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 ECHR.

Court name: Fourth Chamber, Court of Justice of the European Union
State: France
Date of decision:

A stateless person of Palestinian origin, who lived in one of UNRWA’s areas of operations in Lebanon, made an asylum application in France claiming that it was impossible for UNRWA to provide him with sufficient access to medical care and appropriate living conditions required by his health condition. The Council of State (Conseil d’État) submitted a request for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU. The Court followed Advocate General Emilou’s opinion and found that UNRWA’s protection or assistance must be considered to have ceased when UNRWA is unable to ensure that the person ‘has access to the healthcare and medical treatment without which that person is exposed to a real risk of imminent death or to a real risk of suffering a serious, rapid and irreversible decline in his or her state of health or a significant reduction in life expectancy’. The existence of that risk is for the national court to assess. 

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Italy
Date of decision:

The Italian authorities refused to transcribe the applicant's Ukrainian birth certificate, either in full or in part. The applicant, who was born through gestational surrogacy in Ukraine, was consequently denied a legal parent-child relationship with her intended parents under Italian law, as well as any nationality. The Court ruled that the Italian authorities' refusal to transcribe the birth certificate, even in part, prevented the establishment of a legal parent-child relationship between the applicant and her biological father, which was in contradiction with Article 8 ECHR.

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Azerbaijan
Date of decision:

The authorities in Azerbaijan terminated the nationality of an independent journalist and chairman of an NGO for the protection of journalists, rendering him stateless. The Court found that such measure had been arbitrary and in violation of Article 8 ECHR, given that it rendered the applicant stateless, in disregard for the 1961 Convention, and was not accompanied by due procedural safeguards. In the particular circumstances of the case, for the purposes of examining the arbitrariness of the decision terminating the applicant’s nationality, the Court did not consider it necessary to establish whether the applicant’s renunciation of his nationality was forced or voluntary, which was a matter in dispute between the parties.

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
Date of decision:

Switzerland refused to issue a residence permit to an elderly foreign national from Iran, who had been living in the country for over 50 years and cited strong family and social ties in Switzerland. The applicant was residing unlawfully because a deportation decision issued against him had not been enforced due to the lack of an Iranian passport. The Court found that Switzerland breached its positive obligation under Article 8 ECHR to regularise a foreigner who was unlawfully present, and found that a fair balance had not been struck between the public interest and his right to respect for private life.

Court name: Supreme Court
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The Supreme Court held that an asylum seeker may maintain during the appeal phase the benefits received during the asylum procedure, in particular the right to reside and work in Spain.

Court name: Cour de cassation
State: France
Date of decision:

The case concerns the challenge before the French Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation) of a refusal by the Court of Appeal of Rennes to register on the French civil registries the birth certificate of a child who was born in Canada as a result of a surrogacy procedure, and the recognition of parental relationship between that child and one of the applicants. In this case, both parents were a couple of men. The Cour de Cassation ruled in favour of the applicants and ordered the registration of the child's birth certificate on the French registries, designating both parents as fathers of the child.

Court name: Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Date of decision:

The Appellant’s appeal to prevent his deportation to Algeria was brought on Articles 3 and 8 ECHR grounds. The Appellant submitted that he was at real risk of destitution (Article 3) and / or would face very serious obstacles to his integration into Algeria on account of his mental health (Article 8). The Upper Tribunal refused the Article 3 ECHR part of the appeal but granted the appeal on Article 8 ECHR grounds.