CEDAW/C/73/D/102/2016 6.2 The present case does not concern sterilization itself, but the alleged lack of an effective remedy, as agreed upon between the parties. The State party focused correctly on the alleged violation of the right to remedy. However, the authors request that the Committee examine the communication in abstracto, without due regard to the individual circumstances of their cases. Such an approach cannot be followed in an individual complaint procedure, where the basis for the examination must be the individual circumstances of a particular case, not an alleged failure to follow the recommendations of United Nations treaty bodies in periodic reporting procedures. Reporting and individual complaints procedures have different rules and require different approaches. 6.3 The facts of the case cannot have continuous implications on the right to an effective remedy, as follows from the nature of this right and from procedural rules surrounding domestic legal remedies and the judicial system, including the principle of legal certainty. The reference by the authors to the Human Rights Committee case Mariam Sankara et al. v. Burkina Faso 49 is misleading. Although the judicial proceedings were initiated before the entry into force of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol for Burkina Faso, the y continued after the entry into force and were not concluded at the time of the adoption of the views of the Committee. In the present case, the authors did not initiate any domestic proceedings before the entry into force of the Optional Protocol for the State party, while they 50 were aware of the full consequences of their sterilization at that time. Therefore, the communication should be declared inadmissible ratione temporis in respect of the listed authors. 6.4 Regarding the burden of proof in a civil lawsuit, the plaintiffs are merely obliged to mark the evidence supporting their assertions. Consequently, it is up to the court to decide which evidence should be adduced. The fact that there were cases of sterilized women who were successful in their civil lawsuits confirms that the authors did not have to bear a disproportionate burden of proof. To completely omit an obligation to carry a certain burden of proof would disregard the use of any ordinary legal remedies in a national legal system. 6.5 The authors had seven years after the entry into force of the Optional Protocol for the State party to file a civil action, including a compensation claim, during which time they did not have to fear that their claim would be rejected for non-compliance with the general limitation period. Their persistent criticism of the respective limitation period is therefore unfounded. Even the authors confirmed that some sterilized women “might have been able to secure compensation” under the civil law remedies. The authors considered that “chance” was not sufficient for a remedy to be effective. However, the jurisprudence of the Committee suggests otherwise. Thus, the State party fulfilled its obligation to safeguard the right to remedy of the authors. 6.6 The State party disagrees that the avenue through the doctrine of good morals has not been effective in practice after 2008. It refers to a judgment of 22 October 2014,51 in which the Supreme Court quashed the judgments of lower courts because they had not sufficiently taken into account the issue of compliance of the objection of limitation with good morals and pointed to an entirely different professional position of the parties to the proceedings, a hospital and a patient. It placed a strong emphasis on the vulnerable situation of sterilized women. 6.7 The Constitutional Court is a guardian of fundamental rights and freedoms; its rules on the exhaustion of remedies are similar to those of the European Court of __________________ 49 50 51 16/18 Sankara et al. v. Burkina Faso, para. 6.3. B., F., M., G. and C. Czech Republic, Supreme Court, Case No. 30 Cdo 1528/2014, judgment of 22 October 2014. 19-15443