CCPR/C/113/D/2091/2011 Appendix I Individual opinion of Committee member Anja Seibert-Fohr (concurring) 1. I concur fully with the Committee’s Views. I write separately in the hope of shedding further light on the Committee’s legal analysis of this case. Paragraphs 10.3 and 10.4 of the Views outline the reasons which in their combination led to the finding of a violation of article 7 of the Covenant, including the 31 years that the author lived in the State party, his severe mental illness and dependence on medical and family support, the difficulty in complying with his medication after he was evicted from his apartment and the deportation subsequent to his conviction for an offence which was related to his illness and led to a short sentence only. 2. In these circumstances, the author’s deportation constituted inhuman treatment because insufficient consideration was given to the author as an individual with severe mental impairments, to the fact that his criminal offences were tied to his mental health and to the availability of voluntary treatment in order to prevent reoffending. Despite the short sentence to which the author had been convicted, the authorities based their decision on a vague prediction of future offences and treated the author as a mere source of an abstract risk. Removing him on this basis after he had spent his entire adult life in Canada and failing to consider the author as an individual who is particularly vulnerable in a case of deportation that leads to a disruption of his private life, to the withdrawal of available medical and family support on which a person in his vulnerable position depends and to serious mental suffering, the State party did not treat the author with the necessary respect for his dignity as an individual. Such treatment is not in accordance with the Covenant, which is based on the inherent dignity of the human person and requires that the dignity of every individual be respected and for all persons to not be treated as mere objects of State authority. 3. I would like to stress that the Committee’s Views are based on the particular circumstances of this case. Deportation is not per se a violation of the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It only constitutes a violation of article 7 if there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm such as that contemplated by articles 6 and 7 of the Covenant in the receiving country (i.e. nonrefoulement)a or if the decision-making process in the deporting country itself is cruel, inhuman or degrading, such as in the present communication. In the latter category of cases, the Committee needs to consider the particular circumstances of each communication in order to determine whether the decision-making was cruel, inhuman or degrading. This is a matter to be determined by the Committee autonomously. The State party’s own conduct vis-à-vis the individual is at issue in this category of article 7 cases, so there is no room for deference to domestic authorities.b The treatment of the deportee needs to fully comply with a b 16 See general comment No. 31 (2004) on the nature of the general legal obligation imposed on States parties to the Covenant, para. 12. Obviously the case is different if an author alleges a violation of article 14 of the Covenant and claims that the evaluation of facts and evidence or the interpretation of domestic law by a court violated due process. For the purpose of due process it is for the courts of a State party, and not for the Committee, to evaluate the facts in a particular case and to interpret domestic legislation. Therefore the Committee can only find a violation of due process rights under article 14 if the domestic courts’ evaluation of the facts and their interpretation of the law are manifestly arbitrary or amounted to a