Source: http://amsterdamlawforum.org/article/view/51/67
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 05:03:40+00:00

Document:
The story of Soering (1989) seemed an unlikely candidate for the seminal case of the Strasbourg Court on refoulement.1 For two decades, the European Commission of Human Rights (a monitoring body whose decisions could be submitted for review to the Court) had held that Article 3 ECHR prohibits refoulement, i.e. expulsion if there is a real risk that the expellee will suffer illtreatment in the country of origin. 2 Many of those cases were lodged by failed asylum seekers which might raise general sympathy more easily than Soering’s case -a brutal murderer.
Young students at the University of Virginia, Jens Soering and Elizabeth Hayes fell in love in 1985.3 But Hayes’ parents vehemently opposed the relationship and in an escalated row in March 1986 with the young couple, they were stabbed to death with a knife. Jens Soering and Elizabeth Hayes fled to the United Kingdom, where Soering killed two metropolitan policemen. Upon arrest of the couple in 1987, the United States requested extradition of Soering and Hayes. The UK was willing to oblige. Elizabeth Hayes was surrendered, trialed, and sentenced to two times 45 years of imprisonment. The UK would happily have extradited Soering too, but he invoked Article 3 ECHR.
After the ruling, the United Kingdom got assurances from the United States that the death sentence would not be imposed. And upon extradition in 1990, Jens Soering was convicted to two life sentences.5 So in the end, all parties got what they wanted: Soering protection from death row, the UK the extradition and Virginia the trial. Maybe Soering was not such an unlikely candidate for the first judgment on refoulement, after all.
The importance of the ruling in Soering for migration law in Europe is uncontestable. It has become generally accepted that in case of a real risk of inhuman treatment in the country of origin, Article 3 ECHR forbids expulsion. This holds true not only for extradition of alleged criminals like Soering, but also for expulsion of people seeking asylum in Europe.6 Recently, the EU Qualification Directive codified the prohibition of refoulement in a definition of persons eligible for asylum.7 As the first judgment wherein the Court adopted (or confirmed) this prohibition of refoulement coined by the European Commission on Human Rights, Soering merits a place in any historical overview on migration law in Europe.
But the judgment provokes more than mere historical interest. It merits re-examination because in no later case, the Court elaborated in such detail why Article 3 ECHR applies to expulsion cases. Analysis of its reasoning furthermore reveals an approach to interpretation that, implicitly or explicitly, has extended and limited scope and content of asylum protection under the European Convention ever since.
Nowadays, almost twenty years after Soering, the applicability of the Convention to migration cases has become so firmly entrenched in European legal thinking that it takes some difficulty to appreciate the interpretation effort faced by the Court. It had to address two major arguments why the UK was fully entitled to extradite Soering. First, the Convention simply does not forbid expulsion. As an exception to the established principle that a state may control entry and residence of aliens on its territory, a prohibition on expulsion should be laid down expressis verbis, as for example Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which provides that “no State Party shall expel, return ("refoule") or extradite a person where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture”. Article 3 ECHR merely states that “[n]o one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, making no reference to removal, extradition or refoulement. No Convention provision states liability for what might happen after extradition. On the contrary, proposals to add a Protocol stating a right to asylum and a prohibition on expulsion failed.8 Second, Article 1 ECHR limits responsibility to “acts to persons within the territory” of the UK. Therefore, the Convention could not possibly apply to Soering’s treatment in the USA, not even if one tried for some extensive interpretation.
As any other exercise of sovereignty (maintenance of law and order by means of criminal law, for example), it is subject to ECHR requirements, and the mere circumstance that Soering’s case happens to concern control of aliens’ presence does not alter that. This important step it had already made in Abdulaziz two years before Soering. That case concerned a refusal to issue resident permits to the foreign husbands of three foreign women living in the UK. This refusal affected the family life of the women, in the opinion of the Court, and hence fell within the ambit of Article 8 ECHR.
3: it can be applicable if the adverse effects of removal are suffered outside the state’s jurisdiction. Whether it is applicable still remains to be decided.
A treaty for the “collective enforcement of human rights and fundamental freedoms”, that is, a treaty containing erga omnes obligations (obligations towards the community as a whole);13 safeguards that should be “practical and effective”; and a “general spirit” requiring promotion of “ideals and values of a democratic society” – all these principles do not address the question under consideration, except that they suggest a wide, inclusive interpretation of the Convention.
Thus, Article 3 ECHR is “a fundamental value”. This fundamentality follows from the ECHR itself – Article 3 ECHR does not allow for “exceptions” or “derogations”. What is more, this prohibition is found “in similar terms”, hence in non-derogable terms, in other treaties and hence an “internationally accepted standard”. Non-derogability and universal acceptance: these are the characteristics of jus cogens (although the Court does not label the prohibition on ill-treatment that way).15 Fundamentality, non-derogability, maybe jus cogens – all these characteristics strengthen the call for an inclusive interpretation.
What does this lengthy consideration boil down to in strictly positivist terms? Article 3 CAT spells out one implication of the prohibition of torture. This prohibition of torture is a fundamental value, expressed in general terms in Article 3 ECHR. As expulsion resulting in torture would be contrary to this value underlying the Convention, it would be contrary to Article 3. In terms of means of interpretation, the Court hence states that Article 3 read to object and purpose prohibits refoulement. This reading finds, partially, support in other sources of international law, notably Article 3 CAT. But only partially, for the latter prohibits expulsion only if there is danger of the expellee being subjected to “torture”. “In the Court’s view”, under Article 3 this obligation extends to “inhuman or degrading treatment” -apparently solely on the basis of the object and purpose of the provision.
Such a summary, however, does not do justice to the core consideration of this landmark case. Noting that the language of this consideration is not devoid of rhetorical effects (“the abhorrence of torture”, the Convention as “common heritage of political traditions, ideals, freedom and the rule of law”), we should bear in mind that the Court should not only state how the Convention should be interpreted and why, but also convince and persuade the national authorities that their treaty obligations under the Convention really required so. In this the Court succeeded, because the Soering doctrine has been generally accepted. And as regards the strictly legal implications, we should not overlook how the Court here creates the possibility for ever wider application of the provision. The reasoning hinges on the “fundamental value” that “underlies” the provision. This postulate may contain about any implication not expressed in the Convention’s text, awaiting identification by the Court.
Appeals to the Court are (and were in 1989) admissible only if the applicant qualified as a “victim” of a violation of a Convention right.18 Strict application of this requirement in expulsion cases would render the protection of Article 3 ECHR illusory for true “victims”. “Effectiveness” (one of the interpretation principles mentioned by the Court in Soering) enables the Court to “depart” from this admissibility criterion, that is, to ignore or adapt the wording of the Convention.
Put otherwise, the UK would not strike a fair balance when extraditing Soering to the United States, because it had an alternative – extradition to Germany – that would satisfy the general interest just as well.
True, the Court retraced from this particular application of the “fair balance” approach in Chahal21 where it ruled that Chahal’s terrorist activities are irrelevant in view of the danger of ill-treatment awaiting him upon removal. But it can be seen at work in many more.
The fundamentality of Article 3 once more calls for an inclusive interpretation, but unwanted consequences – overbearing costs -are checked by the working of the fair balance principle.
This interaction applies to “classic” asylum cases as well, although the Court does not explicitly refer to the search for a fair balance. As to the examination of appeal to Article 3 in expulsion cases, the Court ruled in Vilvarajah that its own scrutiny should be a “rigorous” one, in view of the “fundamental character” of the prohibition.25 The same is expected, for the same reason, from the States party to the Convention.26 But it falls upon the applicant to “show” the grounds why he runs a real risk of ill-treatment: ex officio scrutiny of the risk is not required. Hence, its effect is limited – the search for a fair balance does apply.
VIII. Prohibitions of refoulement under Articles 6 and 9 ECHR?
“The Contracting States nonetheless have obligations towards those from other jurisdictions, imposed variously under the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and under the above-mentioned Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention. As a result, protection is offered to those who have a substantiated claim that they will either suffer persecution for, inter alia, religious reasons or will be at real risk of death or serious ill-treatment, and possibly flagrant denial of a fair trial or arbitrary detention, because of their religious affiliation (as for any other reason). Where however an individual claims that on return to his own country he would be impeded in his religious worship in a manner which falls short of those proscribed levels, the Court considers that very limited assistance, if any, can be derived from Article 9 by itself”.
Here, the Court takes the same approach to interpretation of Article 9 as it does in Soering as regards Article 3, albeit to the opposite effect: a reading to object and purpose (informed by an a contrario reasoning to the object and purpose of Article 3) in the light of relevant international law reveals that Article 9 will normally not prohibit expulsion if there is a real risk that the expellee will suffer violation of his freedom of religion in the country of origin. The stress on international law – the CCPR and the CAT in Soering; the Refugee Convention in Z and T v UK – is telling. Together, these cases express the Court’s anxiety both to include refugees into the scope of Convention protection, and not to expand this scope too far beyond protection obligations the States assumed under other treaties.
Slightly exaggerating, one may summarize the legacy of Soering as a prohibition of refoulement in cases where, for the most part, other treaties also prohibit refoulement. Even so, this legacy has much enriched asylum law in Europe.
The Refugee Convention lacks a monitoring mechanism that can oblige states to adopt a certain application. As a consequence, the refugee definition is open to ever more restrictive interpretation by the States party. The Court’s case-law on Article 3 since Soering fixed a standard for a number of issues that came up in asylum law. One example is the issue of agents of persecution. In the 1990’s, a number of European states held the view that the refugee definition applies only if the protection seeker will be victim of persecution acts by a (pseudo) state, not, if he is victim in a situation of general unrest and disorder. In this way some of the major refugee crises were defined out of the scope of refugee protection – such as Somalia. The European Court of Human Rights in a series of ruling stated that absence of a state does not preclude application of Article 3 ECHR. This standard now also applies, for most European states, to the Refugee Convention application too: it has been laid down in the EU Qualification Directive.32 The dynamic interpretation provided for by the Court on this and other issues has made Article 3 ECHR a primary form of protection in Europe. Soering’s lasting legacy is adjudication of refugee law by the European Court of Human Rights.
What to think of that other legacy, the identification of interpretation principles or approaches that give the Court so much freedom to widen or narrow the scope of protection under the prohibition of refoulement? One obvious lesson to draw is that a trumpeted extension of protection is unlikely to come without a silent escape. This may be deplored by those who view human rights in general, and Article 3 ECHR in particular, as the expression of human dignity, and balancing in this context as something close to betrayal of that dignity. It may be applauded by those with a realist view on international law who appreciate balancing as a wise limitation on Convention obligations to the extent the States party are willing to accept them. In either case, one must accept that concepts like absoluteness or balancing are unreliable.
∗ Dr. Hemme Battjes is senior lecturer at the Law faculty of VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 1 ECtHR 7 July 1989, no. 14038/88, Ser. A 161(Soering v the United Kingdom).
2 Until 1998, the European Commission on Human Rights decided on the admissibility of appeals (cf. P. van Dijk & F. van Hoof et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights, Antwerp: Intersentia 2006, p. 32f.). It could examine the merits, but it could also bring the case before the Court – as it did in Soering.
3 See for the facts Soering, paras. 12-16.
5 R.H. Lawson and H.G. Schermers, Leading cases of the European Court of Human Rights, Nijmegen: Ars Aequi 1999, p. 328.
6 ECtHR 20 March 1993, no. 15576/89, Ser. A 201(Cruz Varas v. Sweden).
Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted (OJ L 304, 30.9.2004).
8 See G. Noll, Negotiating Asylum, The Hague/Boston/London: Nijhoff 2000, p. 401 with further references.
ing Article 3, to control the entry, residence and expulsion of aliens” (cf. ECtHR 30 October 1991, no. 13163/87, Ser. A 215 (Vilvarajah et al. v. UK) para. 102). 10 Ibid.
13 Lawson 1999, supra note 5, pp. 169-170 points out that the consideration in Ireland v UK whereto reference is made in Soering appears to qualify the whole of the European Convention as erga omnes obligations.
15 See Lawson 1999, supra note 5, pp. 175-6 and H. Battjes, ‘In search for a fair balance The absolute character of the prohibition of refoulement under Article 3 ECHR reassessed’, (forthcoming).
18 Article 35 (new), Article 25 (old) ECHR.
21 ECtHR 15 November 1996, no. 70/1995/576/602, Rep. 1996-V (Chahal v. UK).
22 Here I will not address whether this distinction between socio-economic and other obligations is a sound one in this context; see H. Battjes, ‘In search for a fair balance The absolute character of the prohibition of refoulement under Article 3 ECHR reassessed’, (forthcoming).
23 ECtHR 2 May 1997, 146/1996/767/964 (D. v. UK), para. 49.
24 ECtHR N. v. UK, para. 45.
25 ECtHR 30 October 1991, 13163/87 (Vilvarajah), para. 108.
26 ECtHR 11 July 2007, 40035/98, Rep. 2000-VIII (Jabari v. Turkey).
28 Soering, para. 88, last clause.
29 ECtHR 28 February 2006, no. 27034/05 (Z. and T. v. UK) (decision).
30 The Court found a violation of the prohibition of refoulement under Article 2 in ECtHR 8 November 2005, no. 13284/04 (Bader v. Sweden).

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