Belgium - X v. Commissioner-General for Refugees and Stateless Persons, 26 November 2019, N° 229 288

The Council recalled that the Commissioner was under the obligation to enumerate the reasons which led him to believe that the applicant had not established her well-rounded fear of being persecuted or a real risk of serious harm if she was to return to the Ivory Coast. Under article 48/7 of the 15 December 1980 Belgian Law on Aliens, the fact that an asylum applicant has already been persecuted in the past or has already suffered serious harm is a serious indication of the well-founded fear of the claimant, or of the real risk of suffering serious harm, unless there is good reason to believe that this persecution or serious harm will not happen again.

In view of the very nature of the harm in this specific case, which creates a risk of repetition, and the seriousness of female genital mutilation in that it is an irreversible attack on the physical integrity of the woman, the Court found that the presumption underlying article 48/7 was not rebutted in the present case. It ruled that the mutilation undergone constituted sufficient proof of the risk that she will again be the victim of such persecution, by reason of her membership in the social group of Ivorian women. The decision of the Commissioner-General was overturned and the applicant was recognised as a refugee.