The mother of two minor children, from Nigerian, submitted an application for international protection in Germany for the first time on 27 April 2016, rejected because it was considered that Italy was responsible to examine the application. The mother remained in Germany and gave birth to the second child. On 12 November 20198, the mother submitted an application for international protection for her second child and on 25 January 2019 she lodged a new application for international protection in her own name. She claimed that she had been the victim of forced prostitution by her stepmother and that the second complainant is threatened with female genital mutilation if she is returned to Nigeria.

On 7 June 2019, the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) rejected the applicants’ requests for international protection as unfounded, issued return decisions, determined that their deportations to Nigeria was permissible and set a 14-day period for voluntary departure in each case.

On 31 December 2019, the Federal Administrative Court dismissed the complaints on appeal as unfounded. On 21 September 2020, the Constitutional Court overturned this ruling to the extent of the request for subsidiary protection because it considered that the Federal Administrative Court had not sufficiently investigated and justified how the then partner of the first applicant (who was pregnant with the third applicant) and father of the second applicant could support the family in the event of her return. In the continued proceedings, the Federal Administrative Court dismissed the complaints of the first and second complainants by decision of 27 January 2021.

On 29 October 2020, the first applicant submitted an application for international protection for her third child, which was dismissed by decision of 11 March 2021 and on appeal as unfounded by the Federal Administrative Court.

In May and September 2021 the first applicant submitted the third application for her and her children. She recounted the claim that she was forced to prostitute herself as a result of human trafficking and subjected to a juju oath in Nigeria so that she was forced to pay a very high debt, which she stopped paying when she became pregnant and was then threatened with death. On 10 December 2021 the BFA rejected the application. The Federal Administrative Court dismissed the appeal and stated that, due to contradictory information in the previous asylum procedures, the flight allegations of the first applicant were not credible, but due to the fact that her allegations were consistent with the reports on human trafficking organizations in Nigeria and that she corresponded  to the typical profile of a victim of human trafficking it could not be ruled out that the first complainant was actually a victim of human trafficking.

Upon further appeal, the Constitutional Court annulled the judgment of the Federal Administrative Court.

The court noted that it was not comprehensible on what basis and for what reasons the Federal Administrative Court qualified the allegations made by the applicant as implausible, considering the evidence available and the statement made by the Intervention Center for Victims of Trafficking in Women which had qualified the applicant at very high risk of being re-trafficked. The court added that the Federal Administrative Court also failed to deal with country reports which showed that for victims of human trafficking who returned to Nigeria, there was a risk of being re-trafficked that depended on the individual situation of the person concerned. The court cited the EUAA Country Guidance Report on Nigeria published in October 2021.

The court also noted that the Federal Administrative Court merely referred to the existing family network and to the fact that the first complainant had already managed to elude the perpetrators by changing her phone number, which was in contradiction to the information provided by the first complainant that after changing her phone number, she continued to be threatened and she reported the threats.

The court annulled the judgment of the Federal Administrative Court in respect of all complainants, as it had not taken into account essential file content that contradicted its reasoning and has ignored country reports, thus providing an arbitrary judgment.