State Council recognizes influence of shame

In its ruling of December 13, 2023, the Council of State recognized the substantiation given by iMMO on the influence of shame and fear on declarations during asylum interviews. The Council of State indicated that the IND did not pay enough attention to this issue in this procedure. The explanation given at the hearing by both iMMO and the NIFP-NFI, increased the department’s understanding of the complex psychological processes underlying this case. The fact that early medical records of the person already speak of having PTSD reinforces this case.

In its decision of December 13, 2023, (202108163/1, ECLI:NL:RVS:2023:4620), the Council of State recognized the substantiation given by iMMO of the influence of shame and fear on declarations during an interview and indicated that the IND had failed to take this into account sufficiently in this case. The Council argues that both the iMMO report submitted and the NIFP-NFI investigation conducted at the IND’s initiative were not adequately considered in the contested decision. Almost identical conclusions were reached in both expert reports, but were subsequently overruled by the IND.

This ruling also shows the added value of experts being present during the court hearing. In this case, the experts involved in the investigations from both the NIFP-NFI and iMMO were present to answer questions about the conclusions. The Council of State indicates that the iMMO expert was able to clarify that during the assessment it was found that there was a lot of shame, fear and avoidance and how this is caused. As a result of this ruling, the IND will have to make a new decision.

This ruling is important for all people who, because of the above phenomenon, only can and dare to tell more about what happened to them in a subsequent application for protection. Unfortunately, the practice is still such that the IND usually holds it against the applicant if he or she does not tell everything immediately in the first asylum application, or at least mentions something. With this ruling, it becomes clear how difficult being interviewed can be and that this does not exactly make the IND official’s job easy either.

For the medical case study click here