The Afghan nationals N.N., S.A., and Y.N., who were respectively 15, 12, and 16 years old at the time of their application before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), arrived in Greece as unaccompanied minors between September and December 2019. According to the applicants, they were not provided with information regarding the asylum procedure or with interpreters at the time of their registration with the authorities. They further submitted that they had been registered as adults and that no age assessment procedure meeting the statutory requirements under Greek law, including compulsory medical and psychosocial evaluation, had been conducted. As a result, the applicants were registered as minors and placed in age-appropriate accommodation only after the ECtHR granted interim measures. Until then, they alleged that they had lived "either in protective custody in appalling conditions, on the streets, or in substandard housing for periods of between 1.5 and 5 months", including periods of between 1 and 3 weeks following the indication of interim measures by the ECtHR.

Drawing on its case law concerning the living conditions of child asylum seekers, including Muskhadzhiyeva and others v Belgium, (41442/07, 19 January 2010), Khan v France (12267/16, 28 February 2019), Rahimi v Greece (8687/08, 5 July 2011), M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece (30696/09, 21 January 2011) or R.R. and others v Hungary, (36037/17, 2 March 2021), the court held that the authorities had breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In particular, it found that shortcomings in the procedures for the registration and age assessment of asylum seekers, including the lack of interpretation services, "prevented the applicants from appropriately communicating information about their age and personal situations" and unduly delayed their access to adequate reception conditions.

The court further noted that the Greek government had presented no evidence demonstrating that the age assessment procedures had been followed or that practical information concerning their rights, including the possibility of lodging appeals before the competent authorities or domestic courts, had been made available to them. As a consequence, the applicants were "not identified in a timely manner as minors in need of special protection and they were left to look after themselves in a foreign country and to seek help from strangers, NGOs and, eventually, from the Court, despite their young age and the particular state of insecurity and vulnerability in which (...) asylum-seekers have been known to live in Greece".

The ECtHR found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention, concluding that "the treatment to which the applicants were subjected, as homeless unaccompanied immigrant minors, exceeded the threshold of severity" required to engage it, and dismissed the Article 8 complaint concerning family reunification, finding that the applicants had ultimately reunited with their family members.