CEDAW/C/60/D/51/2013 treatment or punishment, the right to liberty and security of the person and the right to equal protection under the law. 8.6 The Committee further notes that, under international human rights law, the principle of non-refoulement imposes a duty on States to refrain from returning a person to a jurisdiction in which he or she may face serious violations of human rights, notably arbitrary deprivation of life or torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The principle of non-refoulement also constitutes an essential component of asylum and international refugee protection. 8 The essence of the principle is that a State may not oblige a person to return to a territory in which he or she may be exposed to persecution, inc luding gender-related forms and grounds of persecution. Gender-related forms of persecution are forms of persecution that are directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affect women disproportionately. 8.7 As to the State party’s argument that nothing in the Committee’s jurisprudence indicates that any provisions of the Convention have extraterritorial effect, the 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 ju risdiction, 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 i n 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. 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. 9 8.8 The Committee takes note of the author ’s claim that she fears being subjected to gender-based violence by organized crime elements if she is returned to China and that the Chinese authorities will not protect her against such acts. The Committee also notes that the State party’s authorities rejected her claim that they would be unwilling or unable to protect her from atta cks by loan sharks, taking into consideration that she never attempted to seek any kind of protection while in China. The Committee observes that, while the author disagrees with the factual conclusions of the State party’s authorities, she has never attempted to seek protection from the Chinese authorities and has presented no prima facie evidence __________________ 8 9 14/15 See article 33 (prohibition of expulsion or return (“refoulement”) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. See communication No. 33/2011, M.N.N. v. Denmark, decision of inadmissibility adopted on 15 July 2013 (i.e. after the registration of the present communication), para. 8.10. 15-05832