Aboubacar Diakité v Commissaire général aux réfugiés et aux apatrides.
Date: 2014-01-30
18. In that regard, it should be borne in mind that the three types of serious harm defined in Article 15 of Directive 2004/83 constitute the qualification for subsidiary protection, where, in accordance with Article 2(e) of that directive, substantial grounds have been shown for believing that the applicant faces a real risk of such harm if returned to the relevant country of origin ( Elgafaji , paragraph 31).
24. More generally, it should be pointed out that, as the Advocate General observed in points 66 and 67 of his Opinion, international humanitarian law, on the one hand, and the subsidiary protection regime introduced by Directive 2004/83, on the other, pursue different aims and establish quite distinct protection mechanisms.
25. Moreover, as the Advocate General noted in point 70 of his Opinion, certain breaches of international humanitarian law give rise to individual criminal liability. Because of this, international humanitarian law is very closely linked to international criminal law, whereas no such relationship exists in the case of the subsidiary protection mechanism provided for under Directive 2004/83.
26. Accordingly, it is not possible – without disregarding those two distinct areas, the one governed by international humanitarian law and the other by Article 2(e) of Directive 2004/83, read in conjunction with Article 15(c) of that directive – to make eligibility for subsidiary protection conditional upon a finding that the conditions for applying international humanitarian law have been met.
27. Consequently, since Directive 2004/83 does not define ‘internal armed conflict’, the meaning and scope of that phrase must, as the Court has consistently held, be determined by considering its usual meaning in everyday language, while also taking into account the context in which it occurs and the purposes of the rules of which it is part (Case C‑549/07 Wallentin-Hermann  [2008] ECR I‑11061, paragraph 17, and Case C‑119/12 Probst  [2012] ECR, paragraph 20).
30. Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that the existence of an internal armed conflict can be a cause for granting subsidiary protection only where confrontations between a State’s armed forces and one or more armed groups or between two or more armed groups are exceptionally considered to create a serious and individual threat to the life or person of an applicant for subsidiary protection for the purposes of Article 15(c) of Directive 2004/83 because the degree of indiscriminate violence which characterises those confrontations reaches such a high level that substantial grounds are shown for believing that a civilian, if returned to the relevant country or, as the case may be, to the relevant region, would – solely on account of his presence in the territory of that country or region – face a real risk of being subject to that threat (see, to that effect, Elgafaji , paragraph 43).
31. In that regard, the Court has stated that the more the applicant is able to show that he is specifically affected by reason of factors particular to his personal circumstances, the lower the level of indiscriminate violence required for him to be eligible for subsidiary protection ( Elgafaji , paragraph 39).
33. Moreover, it is clear from recitals 5, 6 and 24 to Directive 2004/83 that the minimum requirements for granting subsidiary protection must help to complement and add to the protection of refugees enshrined in the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, signed in Geneva on 28 July 1951, through the identification of persons genuinely in need of international protection and through such persons being offered an appropriate status.