Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Prohibition of Collective Expulsion

  • Isabel Kienzle and Jonathan Kießling

Evidently unlawful, yet difficult to evidence: M.A. and Z.R. v. Cyprus advances Strasbourg’s case law on pushbacks

October 22, 2024

By Isabel Kienzle and Jonathan Kießling For the first time, in M.A. and Z.R. v. Cyprus, the ECtHR has decided on a pushback case against Cyprus, addressing the island state’s practice to intercept and return migrants arriving from Lebanon without an individual assessment of their protection needs. As the parties provided conflicting accounts of the […]

  • Guest Blogger

N.D. and N.T. v. Spain: defining Strasbourg’s position on push backs at land borders?

March 26, 2020

By Hanaa Hakiki On 13 February 2020, the Court published its long awaited Grand Chamber judgment in the case of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, the first case addressing the Spanish policy of immediate expulsions at the Ceuta and Melilla enclaves. In a speech the Court’s president had announced that the judgment would be “instrumental […]

  • Guest Blogger

Push backs of “badly behaving” migrants at Spanish border are not collective expulsions (but might still be illegal refoulements)

February 25, 2020

By Ruben Wissing (Ghent University) On 13 February, the Grand Chamber rendered a long awaited judgment, meandering over more than one hundred pages, in the N.D. and N.T case on the push-back practices against migrants at the Moroccan-Spanish border fence surrounding the city of Melilla – the so-called devoluciones en caliente or ‘hot returns’ by […]

  • Guest Blogger

Prohibiting Collective Expulsion in Melilla: What Should We Expect from the Upcoming Grand Chamber Decision?

August 06, 2019

Raoul Wieland studies law and social work at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is undertaking a work placement with Amnesty International’s Strategic Litigation Unit at the International Secretariat in London. On 3 October 2017, the European Court of Human Rights released its judgment in the important case of N.D. and N.T. v Spain. Considering […]

  • Guest Blogger

Judgement ND and NT v Spain: on the legality of police “push-backs” at the borders and, again, on the prohibition of collective expulsions.

October 16, 2017

By Prof. Dr. David Moya, Constitutional Law Department of the University of Barcelona, Migration Research and Studies Centre CERM, Public Law Observatory IDP Last week, the 3rd Section of the European Court of Human Rights published its Judgement ND and NT v. Spain, in a case brought before the Court by two foreigners from Mali […]