CURIA - Documents 8 of 10 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?docid=242... 29 In the present case, as has been stated in paragraph 18 of the present judgment, the referring court is not satisfied that the applicants in the main proceedings are specifically affected by reason of their personal circumstances by the violence prevailing in the province of Nangarhar. However, it considers that, in view of the general security situation in that province, the applicants would, solely on account of their presence, face a real risk of a serious and individual threat as a result of indiscriminate, conflict-related violence if they were returned to it. 30 However, as has also been recalled in paragraph 17 of the present judgment, pursuant to the caselaw of the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court), before any finding of serious and individual threat can be made, it is necessary to conduct a quantitative assessment of the ‘risk of death and injury’, expressed by the ratio between the number of casualties in the relevant area and the total number of individuals composing the population of that area, which must reach a certain minimum threshold. If that minimum threshold is not reached, no comprehensive assessment of the specific circumstances of the case is carried out. 31 It must be held, in that regard, on the one hand, that the criterion adopted by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court), according to which a finding of ‘serious and individual threat’, within the meaning of Article 15(c) of Directive 2011/95, presupposes that the number of casualties already established, in the light of the population as a whole in the region concerned, has reached a fixed threshold, may, admittedly, be regarded as relevant for the purposes of determining whether such a threat exists. 32 If the actual victims of the violence perpetrated by the parties to the conflict against the lives or persons of civilians in the region concerned constitute a high proportion of the total number of civilians living in that region, this is likely to lead to the conclusion that there might be further civilian casualties in that region in the future. Such a finding thus makes it possible to establish the existence of the serious threat referred to in Article 15(c) of Directive 2011/95. 33 However, it should be noted, on the other hand, that that same finding cannot constitute the only determining factor for the purposes of finding that a ‘serious and individual threat’ exists, within the meaning of Article 15(c) of Directive 2011/95. In particular, the absence of such a finding cannot, in itself, be sufficient to exclude systematically and in all circumstances the existence of a risk of such a threat, within the meaning of that provision, and, therefore, lead automatically and without exception to subsidiary protection being ruled out. 34 Such an approach would be at odds, in the first place, with the objectives of Directive 2011/95, which is intended to confer subsidiary protection on any person requiring such protection. In particular, as is apparent from recitals 6 and 12 of that directive, the main objective of that directive is, inter alia, to ensure that Member States apply common criteria for the identification of persons genuinely in need of international protection by offering them an appropriate status. 35 The systematic application by the competent authorities of a Member State of a single quantitative criterion, which may be of questionable reliability in view of the specific difficulty of identifying objective and independent sources of information close to areas of armed conflict, such as a minimum number of civilian casualties injured or deceased, in order to refuse the grant of subsidiary protection, is likely to lead national authorities to refuse to grant international protection in breach of the Member States’ obligation to identify persons genuinely in need of that subsidiary protection. 36 In the second place, such an interpretation would be likely to prompt applicants for international protection to travel to Member States which do not apply the criterion of a fixed threshold of casualties already established or which apply a lower threshold in that respect, which could encourage a practice of forum shopping aimed at circumventing the rules set up by Directive 2011/95. However, it should be recalled that, as stated in recital 13 of that directive, the approximation of rules on the recognition and content of refugee and subsidiary protection status should, inter alia, help to ‘limit the secondary movement of applicants for international protection between Member States’, where such movement is purely caused by differences in legal 05/10/2021, 12:08