In a Chamber judgment handed down on Thursday 6 March, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Belgium for violating the right to respect for private life of a Guinean national subjected to a medical examination to verify her allegations of minority status.
The court made it clear that it was not commenting on the applicant’s age or the reliability of the bone tests performed on her.
It is the decision-making process that led to these decisions and to the termination of the applicant’s care as an unaccompanied foreign minor that is criticised by the court.
The judges ruled that “given their invasive nature, such medical examinations should only be performed as a last resort, where alternative means of dispelling doubts as to the person’s age had yielded inconclusive results”.
In this case, “the fact remained” that the interview with a guardianship officer trained in dealing with minors did not take place until after the bone tests had been carried out.
Such an interview would have made it possible, on the one hand, to see whether the doubt concerning minority status could be removed other than by medical examination and, on the other hand, to verify that the interested party had been informed of how to assert her rights with regard to this examination.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/frd (in French) (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)