99 Article 3. Principle of Non-Refoulement 3.7.2 Shift of Burden of Proof to the State Party 3.7.3 Procedure by Domestic Authorities 3.7.4 Procedure by the Committee 3.8 Interim Measures under Article 3 CAT 170 171 172 174 1.  Introduction 1  The prohibition of refoulement in Article 3 CAT codifies an important principle of general international law and a norm of customary international law. According to this principle a State violates the absolute prohibition of torture not only if its own authorities subject a person to torture, but also if its authorities send a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture. The Committee’s task is to determine whether the expulsion, return, or extradition would violate the returning State party’s obligation under Article 31—​and not whether the applicant’s rights under CAT have been violated by the receiving State. The CAT Committee has dedicated a General Comment to the principle of non-​refoulement: General Comment No 4 (2017).2 2  The vast majority of individual complaints decided by the CAT Committee concerns Article 3.3 Until 31 March 2017, out of 318 Article 3-​related complaints, 61 were admissibility decisions.4 Out of the 257 decisions on the merits, in 79 cases the Committee found a violation, in 178 cases a non-​violation of Article 3.5 Most cases in which the Committee found a violation of Article 3 concerned applicants whose asylum applications were rejected and who were being or had been returned to the receiving State.6 This practice has led to criticism that the Committee acted as a kind of fourth instance in asylum proceedings, particularly in the Global North, rather than concentrating its efforts on denouncing torture in the States where it is perpetrated. The fact that countries of the Global North, such as Switzerland and Sweden, are those where the Committee has found the highest number of violations of Article 37 can be explained by the high level of awareness of international complaints procedures among the legal profession, and the availability of legal aid, as well as by the fact that the optional individual complaints procedure under Article 22 has been less readily accepted by States with a record of systematic practice of torture. These cases also show that, in times of increasingly restrictive asylum and immigration laws in Europe and other States of the Global North, the authorities are put under a heavy political pressure which can lead to a substantial number of violations 1   See eg Mutombo v Switzerland, No 13/​1993, UN Doc CAT/​C/​12/​D/​13/​1993, 27 April 1994; Khan v Canada, No 15/​1994, UN Doc CAT/​C/​13/​D/​15/​1994, 15 November 1994; Alan v Switzerland, No 21/​1995, UN Doc CAT/​C/​16/​D/​21/​1995, 8 May 1996; Aemei v Switzerland, No 34/​1995, UN Doc CAT/​C/​18/​D/​ 34/​1995, 9 May 1997. 2   CAT, ‘General Comment No 4 on the Implementation of Article 3 of the Convention in the context of article 22’ (2018) UN Doc CAT/​C/​GC/​4 replacing General Comment No 1 (1998) on the principle of non-​refoulement. 3   As of 31 March 2017, approximately 83% of all individual complaints decided by the CAT Committee related to Article 3 CAT. See Appendix A.7B, Figure 1. See also CAT/​C/​GC/​4 (n 2) para 7. 4   Fifty-​eight complaints were regarded as inadmissible, three as admissible. 5   For the details on the share of admissibility decisions and decisions finding a violation/​non-​violation of Article 3 CAT see below Appendix A.7C, Figure 2. 6   Main receiving States in relation to violations of Article 3 are Iran, Turkey, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire). See below Appendix A.7D, Figure 3. 7   See below Appendix A.7A, Table 1, Article 3 decisions broken down by State party (Host Country). Ammer/Schuechner