Asylum, religious manifestation and minority faiths: WH v Sweden

The Grand Chamber ECHR has announced what is, in effect, a friendly settlement in the case of WH v Sweden.

The applicant, a divorced Iraqi woman who had arrived in Sweden in 2007, applied for asylum in January 2008, explaining that she had left Iraq, where she and her family had suffered threats, because of the generally insecure situation for Mandaeans, the Gnostic religious group to which she belonged. The Mandaean community now lives largely in Iran, Syria and Jordan and in diaspora communities elsewhere, because the Iraqi community, which used to number some 60–70,000 people, collapsed and mostly relocated in the aftermath of the Iraq War. In October 2008 the Migration Board (Migrationsverket) rejected her application and ordered her return to Iraq on the grounds that the situation there did not constitute valid grounds for asylum. A subsequent appeal was rejected and she took her case to Strasbourg. Continue reading