A minor Senegalese national applied for international protection and claimed to have been abandoned from his biological parents and to have been raised by a women who picked him up from the street when he was younger. The applicant was raised by the women and his husband who never accepted him as a son and  he was subject to abuses, domestic violence and persecution by the adoptive father, who also used him as a slave. For these reasons, he was forced to flee his country because he was afraid to be killed.

The applicant mentioned that, from an early age, he was put to work hard to caring for livestock and the cultivation of the land. He specified that, unlike the woman, the man had always been very aggressive towards him and that, sometimes, he even prevented his wife from giving him food. In addition, the applicant confessed that the man wanted him to live away from home, in the forest, but to remain at his service all his life. The man prevented the applicant from attending school, which, in fact, he never went to, unlike the couple’s children. According to the applicant, the situation worsened further after the man discovered that he had gone to church with a friend, as he reacted violently beating him and threatening him with death.

The competent Territorial Commission rejected the application and considered that the facts were not related to international protection but rather to personal and family matters. The Territorial Commission considered that the applicant failed to provide information on conditions necessary to recognise refugee status or any form of protection under the Legislative Decree 251/2007.

The applicant appealed against the negative decision before the Tribunal of Naples and reiterated his narrative. The tribunal found that the statements of the applicant on his personal conditions, such as the exclusion from school education and the condition of psychological, social and family impairment in which he spent his first twenty years, to be exhaustive and consistent. Based on the applicant’s statements, the tribunal also noted that the applicant has been deprived of fundamental human rights, forced to a condition of slavery and exposed to a forced migration journey due to the history of family abandonment. The tribunal also considered that the assessment of the statements must be carried out using the information concerning the country of origin.
According to updated COI, the tribunal noted that violence against children inflicted by the person who has parental authority in the family, which do not cause injury and, therefore, are not of particular severity to fall within the scope of Articles 298 and 299 of the Criminal Code, have a legal basis in Article 285 of the Code of the Senegalese Family. Despite the fact that the Senegalese Government declared in 2019 to abolish this legislation, it was still in force and applied. 

Considering the context, the Tribunal concluded that the applicant has a well-founded fear of repatriation since he has not place to return and to suffer again the violence already experienced and the Commission failed in not taking in consideration the acts of persecution already suffered and the ineffectiveness of remedies in place by the Senegalese State. 

In conclusion, following the UNHCR Guidelines on International Protection for requests for asylum of minors and the Articles 1 and 2 of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol on the Protection of Children, the Tribunal of Naples granted the applicant refugee status on ground of membership of a  particular social group, consisting of abandoned children, who are victims of persecution in their country of origin because of their personal condition.

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