CCPR/C/121/D/2770/2016 on 1 June 2000, while the third child was listed as born in 1999. The Ministry noted that the second child — the author — had a later date of birth than the third child. When asked about this contradiction, the author indicated that he did not know the reason for the inconsistency. In addition, the Ministry noted that in the past, the author had referred to his older brother as his younger brother. When the author was questioned about the identity card he presented when he applied for asylum in Denmark, according to which he was born on 1 June 1995, he replied that it had been issued for the purpose of obtaining a job and renting a home. In this respect, the Ministry noted that if the author was indeed born in 2000, he would have been only 10 years old when the identity card was issued. 2.9 The Ministry further indicated that according to background information available on Syrian identity documents, after four years of civil war the civil registry in the country was no longer functioning; controls had weakened and documents were increasingly being issued under false pretenses or without the approval of the central administration. 10 In this regard, the Ministry considered that taking into account that the family book and the registration certificate produced by the author on 30 May 2016 had been issued within the past five years, they could not be considered as objective elements of evidence. Regarding the author’s claim that the benefit of the doubt should be applied in his case, the Ministry emphasized that the author had consistently maintained throughout most of his asylum proceedings that he had been born on 1 June 1995, and that he only mentioned that he was a minor after his asylum application had been rejected. The author indicates that no remedy is available against this decision. 2.10 The author indicates that he has exhausted the domestic remedies, as the decisions by the Refugee Appeals Board cannot be appealed.11 The complaint 3.1 The author alleges that his deportation to Greece would violate his rights under articles 7 and 24 of the Covenant, due to a risk of homelessness and detention in Greece. He contends that there are substantial grounds to believe that his deportation would therefore constitute a real risk of irreparable harm amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment under article 7 of the Covenant. 3.2 In support of his claim that homelessness could constitute inhuman and degrading treatment, the author cites a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, M.S.S. v. Belgium,12 according to which the state of extreme poverty of an individual living in a park in Athens for months without access to food or sanitation amounted to degrading treatment under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights). He further submits that, although he has been granted refugee status, he remains vulnerable to such treatment. On this point, he refers to the Committee’s Views in Jasin et al. v. Denmark, in which the Committee found that returning a single mother with no shelter and means of subsistence to Italy after the grant of subsidiary protection violated article 7.13 3.3 With regard to the risk of detention, the author submits that unaccompanied minors are detained in Greece, often for months, due to a lack of space at reception facilities. 14 In this regard, he refers to the concern expressed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in May 2016 about unaccompanied minors who were being placed in “protective custody” in Greece due to a lack of adequate spaces, such as 10 11 12 13 14 4 The Ministry referred to a report by the Norwegian Country of Origin Information Centre (Landinfo), “Syria: identity documents and passports” (in Norwegian). See section 56 (8) of the Aliens Act. See application No. 30696/09, judgment of 21 January 2011, paras. 235 and 264. Communication No. 2360/2014, Views adopted on 22 July 2015. The author indicates that according to a report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, overcrowding has prevented the transfer of unaccompanied minors into accommodation. See monthly data collected by the Agency on the migration situation in the European Union, 1–31 March 2016, available from http://fra.europa.eu/en/theme/asylum-migration-borders/overviews/march-2016.