X v. Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (Arrest No 191 948 of 13 September 2017 in case RvV X / IV)

An individual from Freetown, Sierra Leone, applied for asylum in August 2015, making his claim primarily due to fleeing violence from his former partner’s family. After receiving a refusal, the individual, 'X', filed for appeal in August 2017. As part of his claim on appeal, he evidenced that there was water scarcity in his region, worsened by climate change and exacerbating scarcity in the dry season. This caused him to walk distances to fetch it, exposing him to mosquitoes and the possibility of becoming infected with malaria. The applicant claimed the former partner’s family had publicly blamed him for water scarcity in the local area, as the family strife the father alleged X had caused had prevented him from building a water tank. This, it was argued, put the applicant’s life at even more risk as the importance of water made people vengeful towards X.

In the appeal, the applicant and his legal team identified him as ‘klimaatvluchteling’ (“climate refugee”), providing a definition to the court. His legal team attempted to argue that being sent back to a country where there is no water may violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court raised concerns that the applicant had not included climate reasons in his initial application, but only on appeal.

The court found that this asylum motive is also not related to any of the 1951 Refugee Convention criteria for granting asylum (political or religious beliefs, nationality or race or belonging to a social group). The court found that this issue concerns “the general level of development” in the applicant’s region of origin, without indicating for what reason this would affect him personally. The court buttressed this decision by using the European Union’s Qualification Directive, which establishes that dangers which threaten a whole population with serious harm do not in themselves constitute an individual threat. The court also required that he demonstrated a real risk of suffering serious harm because of torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment, or punishment on his behalf in the event of his return to Sierra Leone. The court did not find that any of his arguments made a plausible case in this regard.