CEDAW/C/73/D/102/2016 Human Rights and the United Nations treaty bodies. It requires the exhaustion of domestic remedies. The authors implicitly admitted that in order to fully exhaust domestic remedies, they should have first resorted to civil action. 6.8 The State party maintains that the authors misinterpret its obligations under th e Convention and the basic principles of the functioning of the individual communication procedure, including the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies, by justifying that they did not have to exhaust available domestic remedies owing to their expectation that a special remedy would be established. The dissatisfaction of the authors with, and doubts about, the existing remedies do not release them from the obligation to exhaust them. 6.9 The State party disagrees with the claim by the authors that they did not have to exhaust the existing remedies because they did not possess sufficient evidence to pursue a civil claim. They argued that this is the very reason for which a special remedy needs to be to put in place. Even if a special remedy were introduced for victims of illegal sterilizations, they would have to bear a certain burden of proof that their sterilization had been performed in an illegal manner. 6.10 The legislative proposal was intended to be an ex gratia act and was never aimed at replacing the existing remedies, which are of a judicial nature and ensure stronger procedural safeguards, equal access to court, including of marginalized individuals, and independent examination of the cases. The State party decided not to establish the proposed special compensation mechanism, concluding that an “out-of-court” mechanism would not be an effective complement to the existing means of redress for the individual failures in the performance of sterilizations in the past. Additional submissions by the authors 7.1 On 23 August 2017, the authors argued that the State party had not provided a direct reference or a copy of “another successful civil action” brought by a Roma woman to recover damages, referred to in their additional submission. The fact that some Roma women have been able to avail themselves of such a remedy does not mean that it is compatible with the Convention. The communication concerns gross human rights violations; the estimates of the numbers of Roma and other vulnerable women subjected to forcible sterilization run into the thousands. 7.2 On 27 November 2017, the authors submitted an expert opinion by the Center for Reproductive Rights arguing that special measures must be taken to ensure that marginalized Roma women have effective access to justice in practice and focusing on the harshness of the general limitation period. 7.3 On 29 March 2018, the State party disputed the alleged numbers of illegally sterilized women. The estimation of up to a thousand was based on the experience of Sweden and thus speculative. 7.4 On 23 July 2018, the authors maintained that the estimated numbers of victims were relevant and reliable and that the State party had failed to present any evidence such as statistical data or cases in which the courts had provided co mpensation for women who brought their claims after the statute of limitations expired. One case of a sterilization victim is currently pending before the European Court of Human Rights. 52 What the State party describes as a “reasonable” prospect of success is nothing more than theoretical. __________________ 52 19-15443 European Court of Human Rights, Maderova v. Czech Republic, application No. 32812/13, statement of facts of 26 June 2015. 17/18