Today, the ICJ jointly with the AIRE Centre, ECRE and ILGA-Europe submitted a third-party intervention in the case of O.M. v. Hungary before the European Court of Human Rights.
The case arose from the immigration detention in Hungary of an asylum-seeker who had fled from his country of origin, Iran, because of his homosexuality. He was detained for nearly two months before eventually being recognized as a refugee.
In their written submissions to the European Court of Human Rights, the interveners focussed on:
- the relevance of the EU asylum acquis, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, as amended by its 1967 Protocol, to the determination of the scope and content of Contracting Parties’ obligations under Art 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights; and
- the Contracting Parties’ obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights to take account of the particular risks that the detention of asylum-seekers entails, including, in particular, when deciding to detain those asylum-seekers who might have been exposed to abuse and/or may risk violence and discrimination on account of their sexual orientation while in detention.
Hungary- ECtHR OM v Hungary – advocacy – legal-submissions-2015-ENG