European Court of Human Rights

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

251

8.4.2008




Press release issued by the Registrar




CHAMBER JUDGMENT
NNYANZI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM




The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment¹ in the case of Nnyanzi v. the United Kingdom (application no. 21878/06).




The Court held, unanimously, that the applicant’s removal to Uganda would not give rise to a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) or Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.




(The judgment is available only in English.)




1.  Principal facts




The applicant, Evarista Evelyn Nnyanzi, is a Ugandan national who was born in 1965 and lives in London. She is the daughter of Evaristo Nnyanzi, a former Ugandan government minister from 1985-1986 and Treasurer-General of the Democratic Party. Ms Nnyanzi is studying accountancy, is an active church member and has a boyfriend. She suffers from asthma. Her mother and younger siblings live in Kenya.




The case concerned the rejection of her asylum application – made on the basis of her father’s political activities – and the ensuing decision to remove her to Uganda.




Mr Nnyanzi was arrested in 1986 when the present regime, the National Resistance Movement, took power. He has been in detention since 1998 on treason charges.




In 1987 Ms Nnyanzi was arrested when visiting her father in prison. She was detained for a day and questioned. She escaped, after claiming to be unwell and being allowed to visit a local hospital, and went into hiding until her father was acquitted and released later in 1987.




In October 1996 her father was believed to have fled to Kenya. The family also went to Kenya, but the applicant returned to Uganda in January 1997 hoping that the situation had improved. Towards the end of 1997 she was questioned about her father’s whereabouts and her passport was confiscated. She obtained another passport using her real name but a false date of birth. In July 1998 she again travelled to Kenya and then returned to Uganda.

In September 1998 she obtained a ticket and tourist visa for the United Kingdom, originally planning to travel as a tourist.




On 21 September 1998 she was at home with her family in Uganda when plain clothes police officers or soldiers raided the house, looking for evidence. They had brought with them the applicant’s father in handcuffs.




The applicant subsequently left Uganda and arrived in the United Kingdom on 27 September 1998, where she claimed asylum.




On 21 November 1999 the Secretary of State refused her application for asylum on the grounds, among other things, that she had not been involved in Ugandan politics and had not claimed to have suffered any significant problems from the time of her father’s release in 1987 until the claimed raid on her home in September 1998. It was also considered that she would not have been able to leave Uganda through normal immigration channels had she been of any particular or adverse interest to the authorities. She appealed unsuccessfully and was refused permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.




She also made further unsuccessful representations to the Secretary of State claiming that her removal from the United Kingdom would be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. However, on 11 January 2005 her human rights appeal was rejected under section 65(1) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.




In February 2005 she was detained prior to her removal from the United Kingdom.




Her application for judicial review was refused and, on 27 March 2006, the Secretary of State refused her discretionary leave to remain in the United Kingdom.




The applicant was released from detention and granted temporary admission into the United Kingdom, with a requirement to report on a fortnightly basis, after her case before the European Court was communicated to the United Kingdom Government and the Government was informed that the Court had applied Rule 39 (interim measures), requiring that she remain in the United Kingdom pending the conclusion of the proceedings before the Court.




2.  Procedure and composition of the Court




The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 31 May 2006.




Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:




Lech Garlicki (Polish), President,
Nicolas Bratza (British),
Stanislav Pavlovschi (Moldovan),
Ljiljana Mijović (citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina),
David Thór Björgvinsson (Icelandic),
Ján Šikuta (Slovak),
Päivi Hirvelä (Finnish), judges,

and also Lawrence Early, Section Registrar.

3.  Summary of the judgment¹




Complaints




The applicant alleged that her expulsion to Uganda would violate her rights under Articles 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), 5 (right to liberty and security) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life).




Decision of the Court




Article 3




The Court noted that the most severe form of persecution that the applicant experienced in Uganda before coming to the United Kingdom was her arrest and subsequent one-day detention and questioning. It had never been suggested that she was ill-treated during her detention; in fact she was allowed to visit the local hospital after claiming to be unwell. Accordingly, the Court did not consider that the circumstances of her detention reached the minimum level of severity required to fall within the scope of Article 3. The Court further regarded her voluntary return to Uganda and optimism as evidence of the limited negative mental effects of her detention.




The Court observed that the applicant was then left undisturbed until the end of 1997. Furthermore, she was not in any way harassed in the time between her return to Uganda in January 1997 and her alleged questioning at the end of 1997. She was also subsequently able to obtain another passport under another one of her known and actively-used names, with which she was able to travel to Kenya without any difficulty in July 1998 before again voluntarily returning to Uganda.




The Court viewed the applicant’s plan to visit the United Kingdom as a tourist as an indication that she was not fearful of the situation in Uganda prior to the raid on the family home. The domestic authorities also considered that neither the applicant nor any other family members were in any way mistreated during the raid. The applicant also managed to leave Uganda on her own passport a few days after the incident without any reported difficulties.




Moreover, the applicant’s father had been in custody in Uganda for almost ten years. If the authorities had wanted information concerning him, they would have been more likely to detain her before he was taken into custody. Nor had it been explained why the applicant would be expected to know any more about her father’s political activities than he himself, particularly as she had been out of the country for almost ten years.




The Court therefore found that no substantial grounds had been shown for believing that the applicant was of any continuing special interest to the Ugandan authorities or that she would be persecuted upon her return.




The Court noted that the applicant was not politically active in any way in Uganda. Considering that information on Uganda¹ showed that even low-level activists would not be at risk of persecution, the Court found no reason to believe that someone who had never been active at all would be at risk merely by association with a relative.




Therefore, after examining the individual circumstances of the applicant in the light of the current general situation in Uganda, the Court found that no substantial grounds had been established for believing that she would be exposed to a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 if expelled. Accordingly, her expulsion to Uganda would not be in violation of Article 3.




Article 5




The Court held unanimously that no separate issue arose under Article 5.




Article 8




The Court did not consider it necessary to determine whether the applicant’s accountancy studies, involvement with her church and friendship of unspecified duration with a man during her stay of almost ten years in the United Kingdom constituted private life within the meaning of Article 8. Even assuming that to be the case, her proposed removal to Uganda was “in accordance with the law” and motivated by a legitimate aim, namely the maintenance and enforcement of immigration control. As to the necessity of the interference, the Court found that any private life that the applicant had established during her stay in the United Kingdom when balanced against the legitimate public interest in effective immigration control would not render her removal a disproportionate interference. She was not a settled migrant and had never been granted a right to remain in the United Kingdom. Her stay, pending the determination of her several asylum and human rights claims, had at all times been precarious and her removal, on rejection of those claims, was not rendered disproportionate by any alleged delay on the part of the authorities in assessing them.




Nor did the Court find there to be sufficient evidence that the applicant’s removal with her asthma condition, which she asserted was exacerbated by stress, would have such adverse effects on her physical and moral integrity as to breach her rights under Article 8.




Accordingly, the applicant’s removal to Uganda would not give rise to a violation of Article 8.







***




The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).




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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

1 Under Article 43 of the Convention, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer.

1 This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

1 The US State Department (USSD) report of March 2007 and the United Kingdom Home Office’s recent Operational Guidance Note on Uganda of 15 January 2007; see judgment for more details.