The applicant is a Senegalese national who applied for asylum on 15 November 2024 because she lived with her aunt in her home country who abused her and forced her to marry her much older cousin. On 25 November 2024, the Minister for Asylum and Migration rejected her application as manifestly unfounded, without assessing the credibility of her asylum claim, on the basis that Senegal was considered a safe country of origin. She was ordered to leave the Netherlands immediately and was issued with a two-year re-entry ban.

The applicant appealed this decision before the District Court of the Hague, seated in Amsterdam. She argued that Senegal should not be considered as a safe country of origin due to the existence of at-risk groups in the country. The district court examined the appeal in light of the CJEU judgment of 4 October 2024 in CV v Ministerstvo vnitra České republiky, Odbor azylové a migrační politiky (C-406/22) which ruled that Article 37 of the recast Asylum Procedures Directive (APD) must be interpreted as preventing a country from being designated as a safe country of origin when certain parts of its territory do not meet the conditions for such designation. The CJEU ruled that a country may only be designated as safe if there is no persecution, torture or inhuman treatment or indiscriminate violence as a result of an armed conflict.

The court considered whether it followed from the CJEU judgment that Article 37 of the recast APD also precludes the designation of a country as safe in the event that one or more groups are exempted from such designation. It found that the judgment of the CJEU does not give an opinion on this question, and noted that a preliminary ruling requested by the Ordinary Tribunal of Firenze in this regard on 4 June 2024 is pending before it. Thus, the court concluded that there was no reason for it to deviate from its own national case law or to prejudge the preliminary ruling to be taken by the CJEU. Therefore, the court asserted its position that the the recast APD does not preclude Senegal from being designated as a safe country of origin, even though there are groups exempted from that designation.

Additionally, the court referred to the fact that as of 12 June 2026, the recast APD will be replaced with the Asylum Procedures Regulation. It noted that according to Article 61(2) of that regulation, the designation at both Union and national level of a third country as a safe country of origin may provide for exceptions for specific parts of its territory or for clearly identifiable categories of persons. As the applicant's application was being processed whilst she was held in border detention, the court regarded it as unreasonable to stay the proceedings until the CJEU responds to the preliminary ruling. It thereby concluded that the minister did not wrongly designate Senegal as a safe country of origin.

With regard to the applicant's alleged problems with her aunt, as the applicant did not argue that she belongs to a group from Senegal exempted from the safe country concept being applied to them, nor did she demonstrate an attempt to seek protection from the authorities, the court did not dispute the minister's decision not to assess the credibility of the claim.

In light of the above, the appeal was declared unfounded.