CCPR/C/117/D/2559/2015 Act, in case of return to his country of origin. The Board upheld the decision of 11 November 2014 of the Service to refuse asylum to the author. 4.5 The State party proceeds to provide a detailed description of its refugee status application proceedings and information on the legal basis and the functioning of the Refugee Appeals Board.4 4.6 The State party submits that the author has failed to establish a prima facie case for the purpose of establishing the admissibility of his communication for a violation of article 7 of the Covenant. Therefore, it has not been established that there are substantial grounds for believing that the author is in danger of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if returned to Somalia. The State party considers this part of the communication to be manifestly unfounded and therefore inadmissible. The State party also maintains that the author’s claim of a violation of articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights does not concern the Covenant and therefore falls outside the scope of the competence of the Committee as set out in article 3 of the Optional Protocol. Accordingly, the State party submits that this part of the communication should be considered inadmissible ratione materiae pursuant to rule 96 (d) of the Committee’s rules of procedure as being incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant. 4.7 Should the Committee find the author’s communication admissible, the State party submits that the author has not sufficiently established that returning him to Somalia would constitute a violation of article 7 of the Covenant. The State party notes that the Committee has indicated that the risk must be personal and that there is a high threshold for providing substantial grounds for establishing that a real risk of irreparable harm exists. 5 The State party’s obligations under article 7 of the Covenant are reflected in section 7 (2) of the Aliens Act, pursuant to which a residence permit is issued to an alien, upon application, if the alien risks being subjected to the death penalty, to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment should he or she be returned to his or her country of origin. 4.8 The State party also notes that there is no new information in the author’s communication to the Committee on his conflicts in his country of origin as compared with the information available on 19 January 2015 when the Refugee Appeals Board decided on the appeal. The State party observes that the document entitled “UNHCR position on returns to Southern and Central Somalia” and the report published by Amnesty International on 23 October 2014 entitled “Forced returns to South and Central Somalia, including Al-Shabaab areas: a blatant violation of international law”,6 were known to the Board when it decided on the appeal on 19 January 2015, which is why those reports, and several other reports on conditions in Somalia, were taken into account by the Board in its assessment of the matter. In its decision of 19 January 2015, the Board found that the author had not been subjected to any ill-treatment before he left Somalia that would independently justify asylum and, having considered the background information available, it also found that the author’s subjective fear was not based on such objective grounds as would justify asylum. 4.9 As regards the author’s subjective fear of returning to Somalia, the Government of the State party observes that, in line with article 1 A (2) of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the author must have a well-founded fear of persecution to fall within the scope of the Convention. That means that the author’s fear must be justified by objective facts. The Government observes in this respect that, regardless of whether the Refugee Appeals Board may have considered as a fact the author’s statement that Al4 5 6 4 For a full description, see communication No. 2493/2014, A.H.A. v. Denmark, Views adopted on 8 July 2016, paras. 4.2-4.7. See, inter alia, the Views adopted by the Committee on 26 March 2014 in J.J.M. v. Denmark, para. 9.2. Available from www.refworld.org/docid/544a20c74.html.