CEDAW/C/55/D/35/2011 Committee recalls that, under article 2 (d) of the Convention, States parties undertake to refrain from engaging in any act or practice of discrimination against women and to ensure that public authorities and institutions shall act in conformity with this obligation. This positive duty encompasses the obligation of States parties to protect women from being exposed to a real, personal and foreseeable risk of serious forms of gender-based violence, irrespective of whether such consequences would take place outside the territorial boundaries of the sending State party: if a State party takes a decision relating to a person within its jurisdiction, and the necessary and foreseeable consequence is that that person’s rights under the Convention will be violated in another jurisdiction, the State party itself may be in violation of the Convention. For example, a State party would itself be in violation of the Convention if it sent back a person to another State in circumstances in which it was foreseeable that serious gender-based violence would occur. 36 The foreseeability of the consequence would mean that there was a present violation by the State party, even though the consequence would not occur until later. What amounts to serious forms of gender-based violence will depend on the circumstances of each case and would need to be determined by the Committee on a case-by-case basis at the merits stage, provided that the author had made a prima facie case before the Committee by sufficiently substantiating such allegations. In the present case, the author failed to sufficiently substantiate her allegations for purposes of admissibility and the Committee need not examine them further. 9. The Committee therefore decides: (a) That the communication is inadmissible under article 4 (1) of the Optional Protocol; (b) author. That this decision shall be communicated to the State party and to the [Adopted in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, the English text being the original version.] __________________ 36 13-43086 See Kindler v. Canada, footnote 35 above. 15/20

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