Denmark

The case concerns the Danish authorities’ decision in 2018 to expel the applicant, with a permanent ban on his re-entry to the country, following his conviction for possession of a firearm. Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention, the applicant submits that, in their decisions, the Danish courts failed to weigh in the balance that he did not have a significant criminal past, that he had never been issued with a warning that he might be expelled, and that he had strong ties to Denmark where he has lived with his family since he was four years old.

14 September 2021 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Expulsion | Countries: Denmark - Somalia

194. Having regard to all the above considerations, the Court is not satisfied, notwithstanding their margin of appreciation, that the authorities of the respondent State, when subjecting the applicant to a three-year waiting period before he could apply for family reunification with his wife, struck a fair balance between, on the one hand, the applicant’s interest in being reunited with his wife in Denmark and, on the other, the interest of the community as a whole to control immigration with a view to protect the economic well-being of the country, to ensure the effective integration of those granted protection and to preserve social cohesion (see paragraph 165 above). 195. It follows that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.

9 July 2021 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Family reunification | Countries: Denmark - Syrian Arab Republic

8 March 2021 | Publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | Document type: Comments on National Legislation

22 September 2020 | Publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | Document type: Comments on National Legislation

20 December 2019 | Judicial Body: UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Family reunification - Right to family life | Countries: Denmark

In such circumstances, the Committee considers that the Refugee Appeals Board failed to adequately assess the author’s real, personal and foreseeable risk if he were returned to Afghanistan, which is based not solely on his profile as a former employee of the international forces but also on the risk of future ill-treatment by the Taliban which reasonably follows from his individual circumstances including his past ill-treatment in his country of origin.

18 November 2019 | Judicial Body: UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) | Document type: Case Law | Legal Instrument: 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) | Topic(s): Combatants / Former combatants - Deportation / Forcible return - Freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment | Countries: Afghanistan - Denmark

The Committee makes the following recommendations to the State party: (a) Concerning the author of the communication and her daughters: (i) Reopen their asylum case, taking into account the Committee’s views; (ii) Refrain from forcibly returning them to Jordan, where they would be exposed to a real, personal and foreseeable risk of severe forms of gender-based violence. (b) General: (i) Take all measures necessary to ensure that victims of gender-based forms of persecution who are in need of protection, regardless of their status or residence, are not returned under any circumstance to any country in which their life would be at risk or where they might be subjected to gender-based violence or to torture or ill-treatment; (ii) Ensure that the threshold for accepting asylum applications is measured not against the probability but against the reasonable likelihood that the claimant has a well-founded fear of persecution or that she would be exposed to persecution upon her return; (iii) Ensure that women asylum seekers have timely information on the importance of the first interview and what constitutes relevant information in that context; (iv) Ensure that, whenever necessary, examiners use all the means at their disposal to produce and/or verify the necessary evidence in support of the application, including by seeking and gathering information from reliable governmental and non-governmental sources on human rights in the country of origin, in particular relating to the situation of women and girls, and taking all necessary measures in that regard; (v) Ensure, when interpreting all legally recognized grounds for asylum, the classification of claims for asylum on the basis of gender under the grounds of membership of a particular social group, where necessary, and consider adding sex and/or gender and other status to the list of grounds for refugee status in national asylum legislation;

15 July 2019 | Judicial Body: UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) | Document type: Case Law | Legal Instrument: 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) | Topic(s): Domestic violence - Forced marriage - Gender-based persecution - Women's rights | Countries: Denmark - Jordan - Palestine, State of

21 January 2019 | Publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | Document type: Court Interventions / Amicus Curiae

18 January 2019 | Publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) | Document type: Comments on National Legislation

Deportation of girl to Somalia, where she would face an alleged risk of being forcefully subjected to female genital mutilation

25 January 2018 | Judicial Body: UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) | Document type: Case Law | Legal Instrument: 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) | Topic(s): Children's rights - Female genital mutilation (FGM) | Countries: Denmark - Somalia