SPAIN has been ordered to halt the deportation of an asylum-seeker from Cameroon thanks to a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) verdict.
The woman requested asylum at Madrid's Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport, having managed to escape from her home country where she had been forced into an arranged marriage and was suffering extreme physical violence.
But the Office of Asylum and Refuge (OAR) in Spain turned down her application.
The Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance (CEAR) took on the case and appealed, saying there were 'numerous indicators' that her life and 'physical integrity' would be in real danger if she was deported back to Cameroon.
After the National Court rejected the appeal, the CEAR's legal team, led by Paloma Favieres, applied to the ECHR in Strasbourg, France for an express verdict, given that the young woman's expulsion from Spain was imminent.
The ECHR agreed her case fell within the terms of 'Rule number 39', which prevents women at risk of forced marriage and domestic violence in their home countries from being made to leave the European country in which they had sought asylum.
During the three weeks since she arrived, the woman has remained in a cell at Madrid airport, but has now been able to leave and will be offered safe shelter in Spain.
In the past four years, the CEAR has appealed on behalf of 45 asylum-seekers and secured a favourable verdict for 42 of them.
Last year, the Commission successfully appealed against the deportation of 30 Saharans from the immigration internment centre in Fuerteventura.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com