Forum: European Court of Human Rights
INTERIGHTS' role: Third party interveners
Keywords: Cruel , inhuman or degrading treatment. equality, torture. movement (relocation)

On 18 July 2009 INTERIGHTS presented a third party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Izevbekhai v Ireland. The case concerns the Irish government’s proposal to return a Nigerian woman and her two daughters to Nigeria where she claims her daughters face the risk of female genital mutilation (FGM). Ms Izevbekhai claims that she and her two children left Nigeria after her first daughter hemorrhaged to death after being subject to FGM. The question has arisen in proceedings that if Ms Izevbekhai faces such a risk in the place of origin she could avoid it by relocating to another part of Nigeria. 

The case concerns the nature of the Irish state’s obligations, well established in the Court’s jurisprudence and elsewhere in international law, not to transfer individuals to states where there is a real risk that they would face torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. INTERIGHTS’ third party intervention addresses several groups of issues. It sets out why FGM and the threat of FGM amount to torture and cruel treatment and the absolute nature of the obligation not to return in this context. It also suggests that the Court’s approach in this case must commence from an understanding of the practical realities surrounding the practice of FGM, including the clandestine nature of the practice, the extent of familial and community collusion, the [customary] nature and the dearth of reporting or effective monitoring and protection. One of the many results is the difficulty in proving and assessing the real nature of risk in this context. In line with the Court’s approach to date and that of other international bodies, the brief argues that this calls for a flexible approach to the standard and burden of proof, and that any doubt should be interested in favour of protection. The intervention sets out factors relevant to the Court’s approach to assessing risk in this context including the level of practical protection available to women and girls in the state and their personal circumstances. 

Finally, the intervention drew on international practice to set out factors relevant specifically to whether ‘internal relocation’ should be considered by the Court as an alternative where there is a real risk of FGM in the place of origin. Factors that militate against such relocation, of relevance in this case, include where the crimes are gender related, where state protection elsewhere in the country has failed, where the reach of non state actor risk is unclear and unverifiable, where the applicants are victims of past abuse and where due to their age, sex and other characteristics they are particularly vulnerable to new risks in the area of relocation or being forced back to the area of original risk.

The World Health Organization's estimates of the number of women who have been subjected to FGM are actually between 100,000,000 and 140,000,000. The effects frequently include severe mental or physical disability or death. The thrust of INTERIGHTS’ third party intervention is that the Court must ensure in its approach to this case that these and other victims of this particularly grave form of violence against women and girls are given meaningful protection.

Click here to read INTERIGHTS’ third party intervention

For further information please contact Pádraig Hughes at phughes@interights.org or Helen Duffy at hduffy@interights.org