OHCHR has filed petitions to become amicus curiae in Europe and America too – Economic Times

New Delhi: The UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which approached the Supreme Court to be made amicus curiae in a case that has challenged the validity of the Citizenship Amendment Act, has a history of filing such petitions in various courts worldwide, including Europe and the US.

In 2011, OHCHR filed an application to be made amicus curiae (friend of the court/neutral adviser) in the European Court of Human Rights in Hirsi Jamma vs Italy, involving deportation of African nationals.

In 2015, OHCHR filed a plea against Spain on two illegal migrants. There are numerous other intervention petitions the UNHRC special rapporteurs too have made, officials told ET.

In the 2011 case, OHCHR sought intervention as it had the mandate to protect and promote all human rights and to conduct necessary advocacy. It said human rights of migrants have a special place in that mandate, in view of the particular vulnerabilities that migrants endure.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Rome had violated human rights principles by spurning African migrants and asylumseekers on high seas after considering the plight of 24 people from Somalia and Eritrea, among more than 200 intercepted by Italian authorities in 2009 and forced to return to Libya, from where they began the journey.

The case involving Spain had to do with a national each of Mali and Ivory Coast, who were asked to return to Morocco on August 13, 2014, after they attempted to enter Spanish territory by climbing over the fence surrounding the North African Spanish enclave of Melilla.

The court considered that the applicants had placed themselves in an unlawful situation when they deliberately attempted to enter Spain.

OHCHR was created by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1994. In Tuesdays case in the SC, high commissioner for refugees Michelle Bachelet Jeria invoked her mandate to inter alia protect and promote all human rights and to conduct necessary advocacy in that regard, established pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly resolution 48/141.

Reacting to the plea, the Ministry of External Affairs said the Citizenship Amendment Act is an internal matter of India and concerns the sovereign right of the Indian Parliament to make laws... No foreign party has any locus standi on issues pertaining to Indias sovereignty.

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OHCHR has filed petitions to become amicus curiae in Europe and America too - Economic Times