Date: 23 January 2024
Jurisdiction: European Court of Human Rights
Legal basis: Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights
Subject: The case concerned O.R.’s living conditions in Greece from November 2018 to May 2019. The applicant – an unaccompanied minor and asylum-seeker at the relevant time – alleged that he had remained homeless for nearly six months, without access to basic essentials and without an officially designated legal guardian.
Decision: the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights
The Court found that throughout the period in question the Greek authorities had left O.R. to fend for himself in an environment that was entirely unsuitable for minors – whether in terms of security, accommodation, hygiene or access to food and care, or in terms of the measures taken to provide for him more generally – and in unacceptably precarious circumstances, given his status as an asylum-seeker and unaccompanied minor. O.R. had therefore found himself in an inhuman and degrading situation that had been in breach of Article 3 of the Convention.
After dismissing the Government’s objection alleging the applicant’s failure to exhaust all domestic remedies, the Court observed that it had only been on 16 May 2019 that he had been placed in a reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Athens, nearly six months after having first alerted the authorities to his need for accommodation.
The Court was aware of the complexity of the task facing the domestic authorities, especially given the number of unaccompanied minors who had been entering the country at that time. However, having regard to the absolute character of Article 3, this could not absolve a State of its obligations under that provision.
In the Court’s view, the situation in which the applicant had found himself had been particularly serious, since the authorities had left him to fend for himself, without access to stable accommodation, for several months, including over the winter period.
The applicant had therefore lived for nearly six months without being able to provide for any of his most elementary needs, since it had been impossible for him to feed or wash himself or to find accommodation. He had thus been in extreme material poverty, even though the Greek authorities had been under an obligation to secure decent material conditions for him, as expressly provided by the relevant national legislation transposing European Union law, namely the Reception Directive.
The applicant’s allegations were substantiated by the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and by the observations of the European Committee of Social Rights, which showed that the situation described by the applicant existed on a large scale at the relevant time and had been the everyday lot of a large number of asylum-seekers with the same profile as that of the applicant.
The applicant had informed the authorities in February 2019 that he did not feel safe in the Malakasa camp and had experienced attempted sexual harassment. In that connection, the psychosocial report sent to the National Service of Social Solidarity (“EKKA”) in April 2019 confirmed
that the applicant had twice been the victim of sexual harassment at the hands of adults in the camp. The Government disputed neither the applicant’s allegations on that point, nor the corresponding passages from the psychosocial report.
In the Court’s view, this evidence weakened the Government’s argument that the applicant had had access to healthy living conditions in the camps and, on the contrary, disclosed a situation of vulnerability, insecurity and physical and psychological deprivation that was such as to have
seriously affected his already-fragile mental state, and undermined the very essence of his human dignity.
Moreover, the authorities had failed to take any steps to comply with their obligations under, among other texts, Presidential Decree no. 220/2007, by appointing a guardian and accelerating O.R.’s placement in an appropriate structure.
Thus, the Court was not persuaded that the relevant authorities – who had failed to secure living conditions for the applicant that were appropriate and adapted to his needs over a particularly lengthy period, namely close to six months – had done everything that could reasonably have been expected of them to fulfil the obligation to provide for and protect him. That obligation was incumbent on the Greek State with regard to an unaccompanied minor who had entered the country in an irregular manner and claimed to be the victim of a violent family history and to have suffered trauma – in other words, an individual who belonged to the class of society’s most vulnerable members.
The Court found that, from 24 November 2018 to 16 May 2019, the applicant had been left to fend for himself in an environment that was entirely unsuitable for minors – whether in terms of security, accommodation, hygiene or access to food and care, or in terms of the measures taken to provide for him more generally – and in unacceptably precarious circumstances, given his status as an asylum-seeker and unaccompanied minor. The applicant had therefore found himself, through the fault of the authorities, in an inhuman and degrading situation that had been in breach of Article 3 of the Convention.
More information can be found on the HUDOC database: O.R. v. GREECE
English
Jurisdiction:
Article 3 - Prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment
Subject:
Cruel inhuman and degrading treatment
Migrant rights
Right to shelter
Country:
