Sudita Keita v. Hungary

Parties (including notable third parties)

Mr Michael Sudita Keita (Applicant); The Hungarian Government (Respondent)

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Summary of Facts

The Applicant was born in 1985 and was of Somali and Nigerian descent. He arrived in Hungary in 2002 without valid travel documents and applied for recognition as a refugee. While the application was being assessed, the applicant was entitled to basic healthcare and employment rights. The Application was rejected in November 2002.

In April 2003 an expulsion order was issued to the Applicant, but its enforcement was suspended until September 2004 pending fulfilment of certain preconditions. The Applicant applied for and was refused a residence permit. During the period when the Applicant was subject to an expulsion order and had no regularised status, he was not entitled to healthcare or employment. He could not exercise the right to marry, because he did not possess the necessary documentation.

Due to the ongoing war, the Applicant could not be returned to Somalia. The Nigerian embassy in Budapest refused to recognise him as a citizen in 2006, creating the possibility that the Applicant could be eligible for recognition as stateless. Government Decree no. 114/207 (V.24) required the Hungarian immigration authority to inform individuals about the statelessness determination procedure if there was a possibility they could be declared stateless, but the Applicant was not informed about it. However, Hungary admitted the Applicant as an exile (befogadott) at some point in 2006. On 19 July 2006, the Applicant was issued with a humanitarian residence permit which was valid until 19 July 2008. During this period, he was entitled to basic healthcare and employment and, presumably, was not prevented from getting married.

In 2008, the Applicant’s status was reviewed and the Immigration Authority decided that he could not be accepted as a refugee or protected person, and that no prohibition on refoulement existed regarding Nigeria. The Applicant unsuccessfully challenged the decision. As a result, he lost his entitlement to healthcare and employment, and no longer possessed the necessary documentation to get married.

In 2009, the authorities issued a deportation order for the Applicant to be removed to Nigeria. The Applicant appealed without success, but the order was ultimately not enforced. During 2009, the Applicant began living with his Hungarian girlfriend. In 2010, he completed a heavy-machinery operator course with a view to obtaining a work permit.

In September 2010, the Applicant applied to be granted statelessness status after being informed by a lawyer that he could do so. The request was refused in November 2010. The Applicant appealed and was granted statelessness status by the Budapest High Court in February 2012. In October 2012, the Budapest Court of Appeal reversed this decision and refused the applicant statelessness status. This decision was upheld by Kúria (Hungary’s Supreme Court) on the ground that Hungarian law requires a person to be lawfully staying in the country in order to be granted statelessness status.

The Applicant relaunched the procedure for recognition as stateless in December 2012. After initial refusal in June 2013, the court of first instance asked the Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the requirement for ‘lawful stay’. On 23 February 2015, the Constitutional Court removed the lawful stay requirement with effect from 30 September 2015 with reference to Hungary’s obligations under international law, in particular the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.

The Applicant was granted statelessness status in October 2015 by the Budapest Administrative and Labour Court, a decision which was upheld by the Budapest High Court in October 2017. Following the High Court’s decision, the Applicant regained entitlement to basic healthcare and employment and there were no longer any obstacles to his marriage.

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Legal Arguments

Legal arguments by the Applicant

The Applicant alleged that the Hungarian authorities had failed to regularise his situation satisfactorily, resulting in violations of Articles 3, 5, 8 13 and 14 of the ECHR. However, the Court decided that the case fell to be considered under Article 8 alone.

The Applicant submitted that the authorities’ fifteen-year-long reluctance to recognise him as stateless or otherwise regularise his status was an unacceptable, discriminatory and irreconcilable with human dignity.

He argued that he had not been able to access healthcare properly, had been deprived of any means of providing for himself, and had not been able to marry his girlfriend. Despite having been stateless from the outset, the Hungarian rules had prevented him from regularising his situation for a protracted period.

Legal arguments by the Respondent

The Hungarian Government submitted that the Applicant’s situation had ultimately been resolved by the removal of the ‘lawful stay’ requirement following the Constitutional Court’s ruling.

The Government argued that the difficulties faced by the applicant were not of a degree that would represent a disproportionate violation of Article 8 of the Convention. Further, Article 8 could not be interpreted as requiring a Contracting State to grant statelessness status to an individual.

Finally, the Government submitted that the authorities had applied the relevant law correctly and that the Applicant had not been prevented from marrying by his lack of legal entitlement to remain in the country.

Outcome

The Court applied the general principles established in Hoti v Croatia(application no. 63311/14). The Court cited in paragraphs 119-123 of that case (paragraph 31).

The Court began by establishing that “the principal question to be examined…is whether, having regard to the circumstances as a whole, the Hungarian authorities, pursuant to Article 8, provided an effective and accessible procedure or a combination of procedures enabling the applicant to have the issues of his further stay and status in Hungary determined with due regard to his private-life interests.” (paragraph 32)

The Court noted that the Applicant had no recognised status in any other country, had been living in Hungary with his Hungarian girlfriend and completed vocational training, thus ‘there can be no doubt that [the applicant] has enjoyed private life in Hungary’ (paragraph 33). However, it also observed that there were long periods of time during which the Applicant had no access to healthcare and employment, adding that ‘[i]n these circumstances, the Court accepts that the uncertainty of the Applicant’s legal status had adverse repercussions on his private life.’ (paragraph 34)

Regarding statelessness, the court commented that it was an ‘important element’ in the case (paragraph 35) and that it did not ‘subscribe to the Government’s arguments revolving around the consideration that Article 8 of the Convention cannot be interpreted as requiring the State to granted statelessness status to a person’ (paragraph 36). Nevertheless, the Court did not see it as necessary to examine whether the Applicant should have been granted statelessness status specifically, since that was not the nature of his complaint (paragraph 36). Rather, the relevant question was ‘whether he had an effective possibility of regularising his status, allowing him to lead a normal private life in Hungary’ (paragraph 36) (Hoti cited).

Until the ‘lawful stay’ requirement was removed, it had been practically impossible for the applicant to be recognised as stateless. This meant that ‘contrary to the principles flowing from the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons […] the Applicant, a stateless individual, was required to fulfil requirements which […] he was unable to fulfil’ (paragraph 39) (Hoti cited). Finally, the Court noted that it took until October 2017 for the applicant to finally be granted statelessness status (paragraph 40).

Considering these elements in combination, the Court stated that Hungary had not ‘complied with its positive obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure... enabling the applicant to have the issue of his status in Hungary determined with due regard to his private-life interests under Article 8’ (Hoti cited, Abuhmaid v. Ukraine compared) (paragraph 41).

The Court found that there had been a violation of Article 8 ECHR, which protects the right to respect for private and family life, on the ground that Hungary had not met its positive obligation to provide a procedure enabling the Applicant to have the issue of his status resolved with due regard to his private life interests.

International, Regional and Domestic Instruments and Provisions Cited

Source	Instrument name	Provisions cited
International	Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Person 1954	Articles 1, 6, 12, 25, 32
Regional	European Convention on Human Rights	Articles 8, 41

UNHCR Statelessness Guidelines cited

This case does not cite UNHCR Statelessness Guidelines.

Available commentary

Patricia Cabral, ‘Sudita Keita v Hungary - European Court of Human Rights decision on the right to private life of stateless persons' (2020) 2(2) The Statelessness and Citizenship Review 324

• The article notes the significance of the case both at national level in Hungary, leading to a change in national legislation that eliminated the requirement to have lawful stay to apply for the statelessness determination procedure, as well as regionally in Europe.
• It notes the relationship between this judgment and Hoti v Croatia, indicating that the Court may be constructing a consistent line of jurisprudence that has the potential to promote a harmonised and human rights-based interpretation of the core statelessness conventions.
• Cabral notes that the Court is developing a more coherent, rights-based jurisprudence on statelessness by increasingly integrating the 1954 Convention and international standards, although its use of the term de facto statelessness in Sudita Keita is problematic and risks excluding people who should be protected.

Dorota Pudzianowska, Piotr Korzec, ‘Human Rights and the Protection of Stateless Persons in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights’ (2020) 40 Polish Yearbook of International Law 179

• This article analyses the protection of stateless persons under Hoti v Croatia and Sudita Keita v Hungary. It briefly discusses the phenomenon of statelessness and the basic mechanisms governing it, the general standard for the application of Article 8 ECHR, and the impact of UN standards concerning stateless persons on the ECtHR’s reasoning (based on the UNHCR’s third-party intervention in Hoti), as well as the differences between the approaches taken by the Court and UNCHR. It also considers the importance of these judgments to the potential improvement of the situation of stateless persons in Poland.

Tamas Molnár, ‘The Sudita Keita Versus Hungary Ruling of the ECtHR and the Right to Private Life of Stateless Persons: A Long Saga Comes to an End’ (2021) 9)(1) Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law 279

• The article notes that Sudita Keita v Hungary ruling follows in the footsteps of an earlier and similar Strasbourg judgment (Hoti v Croatia) and substantiates the jurisprudential line which provides protection to stateless individuals with unsettled status using the forcefield of Article 8 ECHR.
• The article critiques the Court’s decision to examine the complaint solely under Article 8 ECHR, observing that this may have been a strategic choice to align the reasoning with Hoti and maintain consistency with existing jurisprudence.
• Molnár also argues that the Court gave an expansive and teleological interpretation of Article 6 of the 1954 Convention by treating it not only as a definitional clause but as one that implicitly prohibits procedural barriers (such as a ‘lawful stay’ requirement) in statelessness determination procedures.
• The article identifies potential problems in the Court’s reference to the applicant being ‘de facto stateless’, noting that this could create confusion in international law; however, Molnár suggests this may have been a deliberate strategy to avoid complex definitional debates.
• The commentary concludes that this case strengthens regional protection for stateless persons and exemplifies the ECtHR’s willingness to integrate international statelessness norms.