The ICJ, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and the AIRE Centre submitted a thirty party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights in the case of the immigration detention of a mother with her children in Poland.
The case, Dagmara Bilalova v. Poland, concerned the detention for purpose of deportation of a Russian citizen from Chechnya, Dagmara Bilalova, and her five children. According to the statement of facts of the case, Dagmara Bilalova was also allegedly subjected to domestic violence from her husband, who had been previously deported to the Russian Federation. She and her children were deported to the Russian Federation on 27 March 2014.
The three human rights organisations submitted observations on standards and principles of international and EU law regarding:
- the requirements for the compliance of administrative detention of non-national families with children, with article 5.1 of the ECHR, and with UN treaties, standards and jurisprudence in particular relating to the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
- the international law, standards and jurisprudence applicable to the victims of domestic violence and their administrative detention in the framework of migration law and policies;
- EU, national and international law applicable to the identification and treatment of asylum seekers with special reception needs.
ECtHR-AmicusBrief-Bilalova v Poland-Advocacy-Legal Submission-2015-ENG (download the third party intervention)