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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Re X (A Child : FGMPO) (Rev 2) [2018] EWCA Civ 1825 (31 July 2018) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/1825.html Cite as: [2019] 1 FLR 415, [2018] 3 FCR 86, [2018] EWCA Civ 1825 |
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ON APPEAL FROM
Ms JUSTICE RUSSELL
HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
FD16F07013
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
LORD JUSTICE MOYLAN
and
LADY JUSTICE ASPLIN
____________________
Re X (A Child) (FGMPO) |
____________________
Ms Forster (instructed by Duncan Lewis Solicitors) for the Respondent Mother
Ms Markham QC and Mr Holmes (instructed by Hertfordshire County Council) for the Respondent Local Authority
Ms Green (instructed by Cafcass Legal) for the Guardian
Hearing date: 18th July 2018
____________________
Crown Copyright ©
Lord Justice Moylan:
Introduction:
(i) The judgment contains no evidential basis for the decision to impose the travel ban;
(ii) The judge was wrong to conclude that X's family life with her father could be promoted, or sufficiently promoted, by the father travelling to the UK;
(iii) The judge failed to give any sufficient reasons for imposing the travel ban;
(iv) The travel ban was not necessary or proportionate to the risk to X of FGM and unnecessarily and unreasonably interferes with the family's Article 8 rights;
(v) The travel ban was wrong.
Background
The Judgment
"It is the evidence in this case that X would remain at very substantial risk of FGM should she travel to Egypt with her mother, who would be vulnerable and isolated, unable to understand what was being said or discussed around her and largely, if not wholly, unequipped to prevent FGM taking place if the family decided that it should. Moreover, there is no legal mechanism to put in place enforceable protective measures; or even to ensure that X would be free to return to the United Kingdom with her mother if F decided that she should remain in Egypt."
"81. There will be a FGMPO in force until … 2032. (The mother's) passport is to be returned to her possession but there will be an order forbidding her from travelling anywhere outside the jurisdiction, or the United Kingdom, with X until … 2032 to prevent onward travel to Egypt. This is to permit (the mother) with personal freedom of movement and to us her passport for identification purposes …
82. X's passport will continue to be held by the court until its expiration at which time it is to be destroyed. (The mother) is forbidden to apply for a passport or any travel documents on behalf of or in the name of X; this extends to all other persons including (the father). A copy of the FGMPO is to be served on the relevant unit within the Home Office, the Her Majesty's Passport Office, the FCO and the Egyptian Embassy. These orders do not affect the right of either X and (the mother) to make an application under paragraph 6 of Schedule 2 Part 1 FGMA 2003 to vary or discharge the FGMPO."
Legal Framework
"1(1) The court in England and Wales may make an order (an 'FGM protection order') for the purposes of –
(a) protecting a girl against the commission of a genital mutilation offence, or
(b) protecting a girl against whom any such offence has been committed.
(2) In deciding whether to exercise its powers under this paragraph and, if so, in what manner, the court must have regard to all the circumstances, including the need to secure the health, safety and well-being of the girl to be protected.
(3) An FGM protection order may contain -
(a) such prohibitions, restrictions or requirements, and
(b) such other terms, as the court considers appropriate for the purposes of the order.
…
(6) An FGM protection order may be made for a specified period or until varied or discharged …".
The offence of genital mutilation is defined in s.1(1).
"… that the authorities knew or ought to have known at the time of the existence of a real and immediate risk to life of an identified individual or individuals from the criminal acts of a third party and that they failed to take measures within the scope of their powers which, judged reasonably, might have been expected to avoid the risk".
In E v Chief Constable of the RUC Lord Carswell rejected submissions to the effect that proportionality was irrelevant. As set out in the headnote, paragraph (1), the reasonableness of the steps taken, in that case by the police, "had to be assessed in the light of the evidence and applying the test of proportionality".
"7 The European Court of Human Rights has taken particular note of the vulnerability of children in its judgments on the obligations of the state to protect people from inhuman or degrading treatment. It is noteworthy that the landmark rulings in which the state has been found responsible for failing to protect victims from serious ill-treatment meted out by private individuals have concerned children. A v United Kingdom (1998) 27 EHRR 611 was decided shortly before the leading case of Osman v United Kingdom (2000) 29 EHRR 245. A v United Kingdom established the principle that the state was obliged to take measures designed to ensure that people were not subjected to ill-treatment by private individuals. Vulnerable people were entitled to be protected by effective deterrent measures. The existence of the defence of reasonable chastisement failed to afford children such protection. Osman took the matter further by establishing a duty to take more pro-active protective measures to guard against real and immediate risk of which the authorities knew or ought to have known. There was no breach in Osman itself; but breaches were found in both Z v United Kingdom (2001) 34 EHRR 97 and E v United Kingdom (2002) 36 EHRR 519. In Z, the authorities had failed to protect children from prolonged abuse and neglect which they knew all about. In E, they had failed to monitor the situation after a stepfather had been convicted of sexual abuse, and so it was held that they should have found out that he was abusing the children and done something to protect them. The court said, at para 99:
"The test under article 3 however does not require it to be shown that 'but for' the failing or omission of the public authority ill-treatment would not have happened. A failure to take reasonably available measures which could have had a real prospect of altering the outcome or mitigating the harm is sufficient to engage the responsibility of the state."
She commented later on the relevance of whether the situation concerned the state's negative or positive obligations (paragraph 10):
"… Nevertheless, there must be some distinction between the scope of the state's duty not to take life or ill-treat people in a way which falls foul of article 3 and its duty to protect people from the harm which others may do to them. In the one case, there is an absolute duty not to do it. In the other, there is a duty to do what is reasonable in all the circumstances to protect people from a real and immediate risk of harm. Both duties may be described as absolute but their content is different. So once again it may be a false dichotomy between the absolute negative duty and a qualified positive one …"
"Hence, it is a human rights issue, not only because of the unequal treatment of men and women, but also because the procedure will almost inevitably amount either to torture or to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning, not only of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but also of article 1 or 16 of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and article 37(a) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child."
Lord Bingham said (at paragraph 8);
"FGM has been condemned as cruel, discriminatory and degrading by a long series of international instruments, declarations, resolutions, pronouncements and recommendations. Nothing turns on the detail of these. Their tenor may be illustrated by a recent report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, E/CN.4/2002/83, 31 January 2002, Introduction, para 6: 'Nevertheless, many of the practices enumerated in the next section are unconscionable and challenge the very concept of universal human rights. Many of them involve "severe pain and suffering" and may be considered "torture like" in their manifestations. Others such as property and marital rights are inherently unequal and blatantly challenge the international imperatives towards equality. The right to be free from torture is considered by many scholars to be jus cogens, a norm of international law that cannot be derogated from by nation states. So fundamental is the right to be free from torture that, along with the right to be free from genocide, it is seen as a norm that binds all nation states, whether or not they have signed any international convention or document. Therefore those cultural practices that involve "severe pain and suffering" for the woman or the girl child, those that do not respect the physical integrity of the female body, must receive maximum international scrutiny and agitation. It is imperative that practices such as female genital mutilation, honour killings, Sati or any other form of cultural practice that brutalizes the female body receive international attention, and international leverage should be used to ensure that these practices are curtailed and eliminated as quickly as possible."
"41. … whilst there can be no derogation from N's article 3 rights, the interference with her article 8 rights, and those of her siblings and family, must be limited to that which is necessary to protect her article 3 rights. Of course, though this is relatively easy to state, it is difficult to apply on the facts of this case and, I suspect, in FGMPO applications generally."
"… it is necessary to determine … (3) whether a less intrusive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the objective, and (4) whether, balancing the severity of the measure's effects on the rights of the persons to whom it applies against the importance of the objective, to the extent that the measure will contribute to its achievement, the former outweighs the latter … I have formulated the fourth criterion in greater detail than Lord Sumption JSC, but there is no difference of substance. In essence, the question at step four is whether the impact of the rights infringement is disproportionate to the likely benefit of the impugned measure."
Submissions
Determination
"... FGM is a criminal offence under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. It is an abuse of human rights. It has no basis in any religion … it is a "barbarous" practice …".
It is not in doubt that there is an obligation on the courts to use the specific powers given by the 2003 to protect children and others from this practice.
Lady Justice Asplin:
Lord Justice Irwin: