Court name: Committee on the Rights of the Child
State: Spain
Date of decision:

Eight children of Moroccan nationality born and raised in Melilla, a Spanish enclave city in Morocco, to migrant parents, who had irregular administrative status submitted four different communications to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Even though the children had the right to attend public school by law, they were unable to access public education in Melilla in practice, because they were requested to provide documents that were difficult or impossible to obtain given their irregular administrative status. The Committee on the Rights of the Child found that Spain had violated the applicants’ right to non-discrimination and to education under Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, read in conjunction with Article 28, and Article 6 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure.

Court name: Human Rights Committee
State: Denmark
Date of decision:

Denmark refused to grant the applicant an exemption from the language proficiency requirement and the nationality test in order to become naturalised. The applicant claimed that Denmark violated his rights under Article 26 of the Covenant. The Human Rights Committee considered that, in failing to provide the applicant with any information about the reasoning in its decision on his application or the grounds for refusing his application for an exemption from the language proficiency requirement and the nationality test, Denmark had failed to demonstrate that its decision was based on reasonable and objective grounds. Therefore, the Committee found that the applicant's rights under Article 26 of the Covenant had been violated.

Court name: Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Date of decision:

The communication concerned M.K.A.H., a stateless child, and whether Switzerland violated his rights under Articles 2 (2), 6, 7, 16, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 37 and 39 UNCRC when it decided to return him and his mother to Bulgaria, pursuant to the agreement between Switzerland and Bulgaria relating to the readmission of migrants in irregular situations, where they had previously obtained subsidiary protection.

Some of the findings of the Committee were that (i) Switzerland had not respected the best interests of the child nor heard him at the time of hearing the asylum request; (ii) the child ran a real risk of being subject to inhuman and degrading treatment in case of a return to Bulgaria; (iii) Switzerland had not sought to take the necessary measures to verify whether the child would be able to acquire a nationality in Bulgaria. The Committee also found that Article 7 UNCRC implicates that States must take the necessary positive actions to implement the right to acquire a nationality.

Court name: Human Rights Committee
Date of decision:

The author of the communication fled with her family from Uzbekistan to the Netherlands. After their asylum application got denied by the Dutch authorities, she was told that she had lost her Uzbek citizenship because she had not registered with the Uzbek Embassy within five years of leaving the country. Various application for social and child benefits got rejected  by various national courts. The author maintains that she has exhausted domestic remedies with regard to her claims of violations of her right to family life and non-discrimination and of the rights of her child. The author submits that,by denying her application for a child budget, the State party violated her and Y’s rights under articles 23(1), 24(3) and 26, read in conjunction with articles 23(1) and 24(1), of the Covenant, as well as Y’s rights under article 24(1) including minors. In light of the level of vulnerability of the child and the inability of the mother to provide for the child, the Committee concluded that the State party has the obligation to ensure the child's physical and psychological well-being are protected. By not doing so, the State violated the child's rights under article 24(1).