European Court of Human Rights

FOURTH SECTION

Application no. 16081/08
M. v. the United Kingdom

STATEMENT OF FACTS

THE FACTS

The applicant is a Ugandan national who was born in 1989 and lives in Twickenham. She is represented before the Court by Mr A. Weiss and Ms P. Chandran, lawyers practising in London.

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

The applicant's father died when she was very young and her mother, who had remarried, died when the applicant was nine. The applicant's stepfather first forced her to have sex with him when the applicant was ten. When she was fifteen she became pregnant by him.

One night, while the applicant was pregnant, there were a number of attacks by armed men on her village, and her stepfather was murdered. The applicant fled to a camp for internally displaced persons, where her daughter was born on 21 February 2005.

At the camp, the applicant came to the attention of one of the soldiers, and the applicant entered into a relationship with him in the interests of survival. He later took her to Kampala, removed her baby daughter from her, and took her to a house where she was forced to have sex with different men.

In December 2005 the applicant was brought to the United Kingdom where she was, again, forcibly prostituted. The applicant claims to have escaped her captors in January 2006, with the assistance of one of the men with whom she had had sex, and was taken into local authority care.

The applicant applied for asylum on 8 February 2006 and was refused on 11 May 2006. She was granted discretionary leave to remain until her eighteenth birthday. She applied for an extension, was refused and appealed to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (“AIT”) against the refusal on asylum and human rights grounds, claiming that she would be at risk of re-trafficking if returned and also that her mental health would seriously deteriorate.

During her appeal she submitted expert evidence from a consultant psychiatrist, an expert on Uganda and a support worker from the Poppy Project, a non-governmental organisation which supports the victims of trafficking. The appeal was dismissed on 11 December 2007. The immigration judge observed that she was without meaningful evidence concerning the risk of a trafficked woman being re-trafficked if returned to Uganda. She accepted that the United States Department of State Report of 6 March 2007 and “other reputable reports” identified the threat of violence against women in Uganda as very high. However, there were a number of women's organisations active in Kampala which might be able to provide the applicant with some support. The applicant had some education and work experience, and could speak English, and it had not been shown that there was a reasonable likelihood that she would be unable to survive. There was no evidence to suggest that those responsible for trafficking the applicant would be waiting for her at the airport or able to recognise or identify her. Although the applicant suffered from depression and post-traumatic shock disorder, and was being treated with anti-depressants and sleeping pills on an out-patient basis, treatment for mental health problems was available in Uganda.

The applicant's request for reconsideration was refused on by the AIT on 16 January 2008 and by the High Court on 10 March 2008.

COMPLAINTS

The applicant complains that if she were returned to Uganda she was suffer a severe deterioration in her mental health and run a real risk of further sexual exploitation and trafficking, contrary to Articles 3, 4 and 8 of the Convention.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES