AFFAIRE N.H. ET AUTRES c. FRANCE (Requête no 28820/13 et 2 autres)

The French authorities had failed in their duties under domestic law. They were found responsible for the conditions in which the applicants had been living for several months: sleeping rough, without access to sanitary facilities, having no means of subsistence and constantly in fear of being attacked or robbed. The applicants had thus been victims of degrading treatment, showing a lack of respect for their dignity. The Court found that such living conditions, combined with the lack of an appropriate response from the French authorities and the fact that the domestic courts had systematically objected that the competent bodies lacked resources in the light of their status as single young men, had exceeded the threshold of severity for the purposes of Article 3 of the Convention. The three applicants N.H., K.T. and A.J. had thus found themselves, through the fault of the French authorities, in a situation that was incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention.