Human Rights Claims

Overview

Human rights law runs through the whole immigration system. It is the basis on which family life defeats a refusal, the reason a person too ill to travel cannot be removed, and the backstop when no rule fits a life that is nonetheless here and real. A human rights claim can stand alone or sit inside another application, and refusals of human rights claims are among the decisions that carry a right of appeal to the tribunal.

This page explains the two articles that decide most cases, and how we build claims around them.

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Article 3: Protection From Serious Harm

Article 3 of the European Convention prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, absolutely. In immigration it protects people whose return would expose them to serious harm that the Refugee Convention does not cover, including harm from generalised violence, and in defined circumstances severe medical cases where return would mean a serious, rapid and irreversible decline. Article 3 medical claims are hard, the threshold is high, and they are evidence cases: treating clinicians, country treatment availability and personal circumstances, assembled precisely.

Article 8: Family And Private Life

Article 8 protects family and private life, not absolutely but through a balancing exercise the rules structure. In practice it arises three ways:

• inside the family rules, where partner and parent applications that fail a requirement can still succeed on exceptional circumstances
• through private life: long residence, children with seven years' residence, young adults raised here, and the very significant obstacles test for integration on return
• in deportation cases, through the statutory exceptions

Parliament has weighted the balance through statute, and the case law is dense. What survives contact with a judge is specificity: this family, these children, this evidence. Generic Article 8 claims fail generically.

Making The Claim Properly

A human rights claim needs to be made in the right procedural clothes: within an application under the rules where one fits, as representations where none does, and always in a form the Home Office must actually decide, because a decided claim carries appeal rights that informal letters do not. This is technical and consequential, and it is where legal preparation earns its place.

What A Strong Claim Contains

The factual record: statements from the family, not just the applicant. Independent corroboration: schools, clinicians, social workers. The children's position, evidenced as their own, not as an appendix to the parents'. Country conditions where return is in issue. And a legal framework that takes the judge from the facts to the outcome without asking for generosity.

If The Claim Is Refused

Refused human rights claims ordinarily attract a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. Certification can restrict that in defined cases, and challenging certification is judicial review work. Where a claim has failed and circumstances change, further submissions may amount to a fresh claim.

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