The case concerned a transgender man from Iran who had obtained asylum in Hungary but could not
legally change his gender and name in that country.
The Court noted that the domestic system for gender recognition had excluded the applicant simply
because he did not have a birth certificate from Hungary, a change in the birth register being the
way name and gender changes were legally recognised.
The Court concluded that a fair balance had not been struck between the public interest and the
applicant’s right to respect for his private life owing to the refusal to give him access to the legal
gender recognition procedure.
The French authorities had failed in their duties under domestic law. They were found responsible
for the conditions in which the applicants had been living for several months: sleeping rough,
without access to sanitary facilities, having no means of subsistence and constantly in fear of being
attacked or robbed. The applicants had thus been victims of degrading treatment, showing a lack of
respect for their dignity.
The Court found that such living conditions, combined with the lack of an appropriate response from
the French authorities and the fact that the domestic courts had systematically objected that the
competent bodies lacked resources in the light of their status as single young men, had exceeded
the threshold of severity for the purposes of Article 3 of the Convention. The three applicants N.H.,
K.T. and A.J. had thus found themselves, through the fault of the French authorities, in a situation
that was incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention.
