CEDAW/C/70/D/76/2014
Background information is collected from various sources, including the Internet, the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, reports from
non-governmental organizations and the competent authorities of Denmark.
4.7 The State party insists that the author is requesting an extraterritorial application
of the Convention. Invoking the Committee’s jurisprudence, 5 the State party
considers that the author has failed to establish that she will be exposed to a real,
personal and foreseeable risk of serious forms of gender-based violence if deported
to Somalia. The State party submits that the author has failed to establish a prima
facie case for the purpose of admissibility of her communication. Accordingly, it
concludes that her communication should be declared inadmissible, given that the
claims therein are manifestly unfounded.
4.8 The State party submits that the author merely alleged that she would be at risk
of serious forms of gender-based violence if she were returned to Somalia, but that
she failed to explain the extent to which that would infringe articles 12 and 15 of the
Convention. Those articles are not relevant in the present case, because there is no
issue of access to medical or health care and the author has not been treated
unfavourably because she is a woman.
4.9 According to the State party, the author is attempting to use the Committee as
an appellate body in order to have the factual circumstances evaluated in support of
her claim, which would equate to a reassessment of her asylum application by the
Committee. The author merely expressed her disagreement with decisions made b y
the national courts and failed to identify any irregularity in the decision -making
process or any risk factors that the Refugee Appeals Board had failed to take properly
into account in determining the applicability of the principle of non -refoulement to
her case. The State party argues that the Committee should give considerable weight
to the facts established by the Board, which is better placed to assess the factual
circumstances of the author’s case.
Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility
and merits
5.1 On 1 March 2016, the author submitted her comments on the State party’s
observations. She reports that she fears deportation because four Somali nationals
were recently deported by the authorities of Denmark. She claims that, in the light of
a recent case of a Somali asylum seeker in Sweden, 6 the Refugee Appeals Board of
Denmark reopened several similar cases concerning single Somali women, and that
the cases included the author of communication No. 93/2015. 7 The author expresses
surprise that her case has not been reopened, given that she is in a similar situation as
that of the author of communication No. 93/2015.
5.2 The author also claims that Denmark does not comply with the decisions of the
various United Nations human rights treaty bodies. She mentions as an example a
communication relating to deportation before the Human Rights Committee. 8
According to her, the Refugee Appeals Board denied that it was legally bound by that
decision 9 on the grounds that the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil
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See M.N.N. v. Denmark (CEDAW/C/55/D/33/2011).
The author refers to the judgment of 10 September 2015 of the European Court of Human Rights
in R.H. v. Sweden (application No. 4601/14).
Communication No. 93/2015, K.I.A v. Denmark, discontinued on 6 November 2017.
See Omo-Amenaghawon v. Denmark (CCPR/C/114/D/2288/2013).
The author provided the Committee with the decision of the Refugee Appeals Board of
17 November 2015.
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