“Individualised” risk of torture in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee wrote a policy paper that aims to clarify how the European Court of Human Rights, in its evolving jurisprudence, interprets the requirement of individualisation when defining the threshold for a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

When establishing the risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in asylum procedures, states often face questions like, “to what extent should this risk be of an individual character”, or “to what extent the alleged victim should be ‘singled out’ by the perpetrator of such harm”? This issue has become a key point of debate in many member states concerning the application of the common EU concept of subsidiary protection. The paper (written in English) can be downloaded from here.