Failure to assess risks of ill-treatment of asylum-seekers

Ilias and Ahmed v. Hungary (Application no. 47287/15)

• Briefed on: September 15 2023, and September 16, 2022

Documents from the 2023 briefing:

• Communication from the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (August 2023)

• Power point presentation by Balazs Gaal, HHC

Documents from the September 2022 briefing:

• Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights

• Communication from the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

• Communication from Hungarian Helsinki Committee (August 2022)

• Power point presentation by the HHC

The case of Ilias and Ahmed v. Hungary concerns the authorities’ failure to comply with their procedural obligation under Article 3 to assess the risks of ill-treatment before removing the two asylum-seeking applicants to Serbia in 2015. The Court found in particular that “there was an insufficient basis for the government’s decision to establish a general presumption concerning Serbia as a safe third country”, that “the expulsion decisions disregarded the authoritative findings of the UNHCR as to a real risk of denial of access to an effective asylum procedure in Serbia and summary removal from Serbia to North Macedonia and then to Greece, and that the authorities exacerbated the risks facing the applicants by inducing them to enter Serbia illegally instead of negotiating an orderly return”.

Hungarian Helsinki Committee has been actively involved in the process of the examination of the case. The organization has highlighted that the practice of push-backs and that domestic legislation has not been amended to bring Hungary in harmony with its obligations stemming from international law and the law of the European Union.Returns to Serbia continued in a summary manner with no examination as to whether that would  amount to refoulement, and the procedural leg of Article 3 of the Convention thus remained to be systemically breached. 

All the case documents can be found here.