European Migration Network

This is a general concept which has no legal definition in the Member States. "Group" is interpreted broadly and can refer to persons of a particular religious belief, social (e.g. homosexuals), and/or coming from a particular region within a country. In any case, whilst a group may be persecuted, asylum applications are addressed on an individual basis in the Member States, and not all together as one group.


The concept given here is taken from that developed in rulings of Germany’s highest administrative court. Refugees are entitled to asylum in Germany, if they are suffering political persecution as individuals and if they are members of a section of the population (a Group) that is suffering oppression or is threatened as a whole in its home country according to one of the criteria defined in the Geneva Convention to an extent that the members of such group are not only covertly or potentially at risk, but quite tangibly and imminently; this is the concept of group persecution.


If group persecution applies it is generally assumed that each member of such a group may fall victim to acts of persecution himself or herself. Thus the term helps to lend credibility to the claim of the existence of political persecution.


An assumption of group persecution requires a certain intensity of persecution to warrant the general assumption of the individual persecution of each group member, irrespective of whether an individual has indeed been the victim of such persecution. This requires a threat emanating from so large a number of violations of rights protected by asylum law that it goes beyond separate individual infringements or a large number of individual infringements, but rather constitutes acts of persecution in the specific territory aimed at the group as a whole which increase, are repeated and spread to such an extent that there is not only a possibility, but a direct imminent danger of becoming a victim oneself for any member of such group.


With consideration to the general principle of subsidiarity in refugee law, group persecution will only entitle a refugee to protection abroad, if the danger is present in the entire territory of the country of origin, i.e. if there is no internal alternative for protection. For the purposes of the danger of persecution after return such an internal alternative must be reasonable and accessible from the country of refuge.


Related Term: Group Determination of Refugee Status, prima facie Refugee, Persecution, Actors of Persecution, Acts of Persecution

Source:
Definition according to the consistent practice of the Federal Administrative Court since its ruling of 15 May 1990 - 9 C 17.89 recently confirmed by the Court’s ruling of 18 July 2006 - 1 C 15.05.