The National Court of Asylum (CNDA) granted asylum to a Sudanese national from Central Darfur due to the situation of indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity.
The applicant from Abu Jaradil, a locality in Central Darfur, requested international protection due to an alleged fear of the Janjawid militiamen and the Sudanese authorities due to political opinions favorable to rebellion attributed to him because of his Borgo ethnic origin.
The Office for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons rejected the application and the applicant appealed.
The annulled the negative decision and granted subsidiary protection to the applicant. The court assessed that the applicant did not qualify for refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention on the grounds of persecution due to his ethnicity. The court stated that the applicant’s declarations did not suffice to establish a real membership to the Borgo ethnic group because of his inconsistent and incomplete declarations. In addition, the court added that even if it were to assume the applicant’s Borgo ethnicity, refugee status could not be granted as these people did not ally with the non-Arab groups who rebelled against the Sudanese army and its paramilitary group. On this matter, the court concluded that the Borgo people were not a target of persecutions on account of their political views.
However, the CNDA ruled that the applicant was eligible for subsidiary protection under article L. 512-1 of the Code on the Entry and Residence of Foreigners and the Right of Asylum (CESEDA) due to the highly unstable security situation in Central Darfur. Prior to assessing the country-of-origin information, the court established that the applicant was indeed a Sudanese national and originated from Central Darfur.
Subsidiary protection was granted as it was considered that he would run, in the event of return to his country of origin, due to mere presence as a civilian, a real risk of suffering a serious threat against his life or person, without being able to obtain effective protection from the authorities of his country. The court held that this threat was the consequence of a situation of violence, resulting from an internal armed conflict, likely to extend indiscriminately to civilians.
The court relied on available public documentary sources, including the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which highlighted the security incidents, the number of victims, the displacement of populations and the humanitarian situation generated in Central Darfur by the fighting which has intensified since 15 April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglot.
The court also referred to the CJEU judgement in CF and DN (Afghanistan) v Bundesrepublik Deutschland, (C-901/19) of 10 June 2021 where it stated that the existence of such a threat (based on Article 15c of the recast QD) is not subordinated to the condition of analysing the nexus between the number of victims in the region concerned and the total number of individuals vis-à-vis the population of the affected region would reach a minimum level, but it is requested to take into consideration, globally, all the circumstances of the case, notably those which characterise the situation in the country of origin of the applicant, and for example other quantitative criteria regarding the number of victims, the intensity of the confrontation between the parties, the level of organisation of the armed forces present, the duration of the conflict, the geographical coverage of the situation of violence or the aggression eventually intentional against the civilian population.