Published on 27 November 2023

THIRD SECTION

Application no. 16216/23 S.M.E. against the Netherlands lodged on 17 April 2023 communicated on 8 November 2023

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The applicant is an Eritrean national, who was born in Saudi Arabia and lived and worked in that country until she entered the Netherlands and applied for asylum. The applicant claimed that she could not leave for Eritrea, because she did not want to complete the mandatory national service, in which women are subjected to inhuman treatment, and because as a single woman of Sunni Muslim belief and belonging to the Jeberti population group, who had never been to Eritrea and had no social network, she would face difficulties settling there.

The Deputy Minister of Justice and Security rejected her application, finding that her claim that she would be subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention, if removed to Eritrea, had been insufficiently substantiated. Relying on country-of-origin information and noting, inter alia , that it followed from Article 11 of the National Service Proclamation that only persons in Eritrea between the age of 18 and 40 years old had to register for national service in the district where they were living, the Deputy Minister concluded that the applicant would not be drafted since she had never lived in Eritrea and had thus never registered and since she had now reached the age of 40 and would thus not have to register anymore. Before the domestic courts the applicant unsuccessfully contested the Deputy Minister’s conclusion, submitting several documents that, according to her, showed that women older than 40 would still have to complete their national service.

QUESTION TO THE PARTIES

In the light of the applicant’s claim and the information available, would she face a real risk of being subjected to treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention if she would be expelled to Eritrea?