CEDAW/C/73/D/102/2016 5.13 The statement by the State party that “the Supreme Court held that the objection of limitation concerning the claims for financial compensation of unlawful sterilizations was raised contrary to good morals and quashed the judgments of lower courts” is misleading. The Supreme Court found that victims of forced sterilization had a procedural right to have the “good morals”/“bonnes moeurs” provision considered. The Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to reopen the cases, not to find in favour of the victims. Given that the jurisprudence is now s ettled and that the authorities have rejected the introduction of a specific remedy, the authors have only a theoretical and illusory prospect of securing compensation from the courts through the discretionary application of the “good morals”/“bonnes moeurs” principle. 5.14 Individuals bringing civil claims for damages pay court fees, which are a percentage of the amount claimed. The authors are unlikely to be able to afford the fee and even if they could, the amount they would be able to pay would be so l imited that it would be considerably lower than the amount of the claim. The court might exempt a person from paying the legal fee only if there were “especially serious reasons”.47 5.15 The Constitutional Court can intervene after a long civil action has failed and can only require the courts to consider the application of the “good morals”/“bonnes moeurs” principle in the cases of the authors. Nothing indicates that their cases would trigger this discretionary exception to the rule prohibiting compensation claims after the statute of limitations has expired. 5.16 On the merits, the authors challenge the argument that there is no obligation to have a special remedy for victims of forced sterilization. Given the time of their sterilizations, the exclusion suffered and their marginalized position, they were entitled to a specific remedy. Other countries with a similar history (Austria, Germany, Peru, Sweden and certain states in the United States of America) have put in place remedies outside the ordinary legal system. The failure to do so, while other schemes exist for victims of ill-treatment under earlier discredited regimes, amounts to discrimination against Roma women who have been forcibly sterilized. 5.17 The domestic law and jurisprudence have led to the revictimization of the authors and intersectional discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, gender and social status, given that they do not distinguish between Roma women who are victims of forced sterilization and other plaintiffs requesting compensation in civil proceedings for ill-treatment and apply the same burden of proof and statute of limitations to everyone. Remedies for human rights violations should be tailored to reflect t he vulnerability of certain categories. The authors, as victims of gross human rights violations, maintain that the State party is required to put in place a compensation scheme tailored to victims of forced sterilization. 48 Additional submissions by the State party 6.1 On 5 May 2017, the State party reiterated that the authors had not attempted to shed light on the circumstances surrounding their sterilization and interprets their silence as a confirmation of its description of the circumstances. The State party rejects the claim that there were “several thousand” illegally sterilized women as unsubstantiated. The Ombudsperson documented several dozens of cases. __________________ 47 48 19-15443 Czech Republic, Civil Procedure Code, Law No. 99/1963 of 4 December 1963, sect. 138. The Committee recommended in its most recent concluding observations on the Czech Republic (CEDAW/C/CZE/CO/6, para. 29) that the State review the three-year statutory limitation period and establish an ex gratia compensation procedure for victims of forced or non-consensual sterilizations. 15/18