ECtHR, A.S.N. and Others v. The Netherlands, Appl. nos. 68377/17 and 530/18

Removal of Sikh families to Afghanistan: Religious Minority and Ill-Treatment Risk Assessment.

Abstract

In the A.S.N. and Others v. The Netherlands case, the ECtHR held that there would be no violation of Article 3 in case of removal of families belonging to the Sikh religious minority to Afghanistan. Despite the fact that the size of the Sikh community in the country is shrinking to few thousands because of their systematic exposure to discrimination with regard to employment and political representation and, more generally, to intimidation and intolerance within the Afghan society, the Strasbourg judges held that the applicants failed to reach the severity threshold in order to fall within the scope of Article 3. Therefore, the ECtHR saw no ground to depart from the conclusion reached by the Dutch authorities who retained that, even though the applicants belong to a “vulnerable minority group”, they had failed to make plausible their fear of ill-treatments upon return to Afghanistan.