Eighteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In France, the National Court of Asylum (CNDA) is the jurisdiction competent to make decisions relating to appeals made by asylum-seekers, including those whose initial demand has been rejected by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA). It is a specialist administrative court of last resort under the control of its judge of cassation (the Council of State) which rules on appeals brought against the decisions made by OFPRA, an organization attached to the Ministry of the Interior. As an administrative court, the CNDA is called on, like all French administrative jurisdictions, to handle multiple cases falling within its sphere of competence while simultaneously reconciling the exercise of these tasks with the delicate human character of cases relating to applications for international protection. Who are the individuals designated or proposed by the Council of State and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), respectively, as being the most suitable to act in this role and assume these functions? What are the differences in the profiles of the two types of Court assessor? We include 28 interviews and statistical data. Establishing the truth or plausibility of the hardships that the applicants claim to have experienced is the most delicate of the tasks facing these judges. It is, furthermore, a task that contributes to the specificity and the very particular nature of such cases.