JUDGMENT OF 13. 1. 2021 – CASE C-507/19 BUNDESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND (REFUGEE STATUS OF A STATELESS PERSON OF PALESTINIAN ORIGIN) personal safety was not at serious risk and, secondly, he or she could expect neither to receive protection or assistance from UNRWA in the field to which he or she travelled nor to be able to return at short notice to the field from which he or she came. 69 In order to answer that question, it must first of all be pointed out that the fact that Article 1(D) of the Geneva Convention, to which the first sentence of Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95 refers, simply excludes from the scope of the convention persons who ‘are at present receiving’ protection or assistance from an organ or agency of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cannot be construed as meaning that mere absence or voluntary departure from UNRWA’s area of operations would be sufficient to end the exclusion from refugee status laid down in that provision (see, by analogy, judgment of 19 December 2012, Abed El Karem El Kott and Others, C-364/11, EU:C:2012:826, paragraph 49). 70 Indeed, if that were the case, an applicant for asylum within the meaning of Article 2(c) of Directive 2013/32 who submitted an application in the territory of a Member State and was therefore physically absent from UNRWA’s area of operations would never be caught by the ground for exclusion from refugee status established in Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95, which would have the effect of depriving that ground for exclusion of any practical effect (see, by analogy, judgment of 19 December 2012, Abed El Karem El Kott and Others, C-364/11, EU:C:2012:826, paragraph 50). 71 Moreover, to accept that voluntary departure from UNRWA’s area of operations and, therefore, voluntary renunciation of the assistance provided by that agency would trigger the application of the second sentence of Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95 would run counter to the objective pursued by the first paragraph of Article 1(D) of the Geneva Convention, which is intended to exclude from the benefits of the convention all persons who receive such assistance (see, by analogy, judgment of 19 December 2012, Abed El Karem El Kott and Others, C-364/11, EU:C:2012:826, paragraph 51). 72 It follows, next, from the case-law cited in paragraph 54 above that it cannot be considered that the departure from UNRWA’s area of operations from a given field of that area is involuntary if the person concerned was able to access another field of that area in order to receive effective protection or assistance from UNRWA. 73 In the case which gave rise to the judgment of 25 July 2018, Alheto (C-585/16, EU:C:2018:584), the applicant in the main proceedings had – during the armed conflict between the State of Israel and Hamas, the organisation which controls the Gaza Strip – left the Gaza Strip to seek safety in Jordan, where she had stayed and from where she had travelled to Bulgaria. The Court considered that it could not be ruled out that UNRWA might have been able to provide a person registered with it with living conditions in Jordan that meet the requirements of its mission after that person has fled the Gaza Strip, so that that person could stay there in safety, under dignified living conditions and without being at risk of being refouled to a territory to which that person could not return in safety. If those circumstances were established, according to the Court, a person such as the applicant in the main proceedings could not be regarded as having been forced, by reason of circumstances beyond his or her control, to leave UNRWA’s area of operations (see, to that effect, judgment of 25 July 2018, Alheto, C-585/16, EU:C:2018:584, paragraph 132 to 134). 74 It could not be otherwise in the case of a stateless person of Palestinian origin who decided to leave a field of UNRWA’s area of operations in which his or her personal safety was not at serious risk and in which that person could receive protection or assistance from UNRWA, in order to travel to another field in that area, in which he or she could not reasonably expect, on the basis of the specific information available to him or her concerning that field, either to receive protection or assistance from UNRWA or to be able to return at short notice to the field from which he or she came. Accordingly, it cannot be concluded, in the event of such a voluntary departure from the first field to the second field, that the stateless person was forced to leave UNRWA’s area of operations, taken as a whole, if he or she later left that second field in order to travel to the European Union. 14 ECLI:EU:C:2021:3