Annex Individual opinion of Committee member Anja Seibert-Fohr (concurring) 1. I concur with the Committee’s conclusion that the State party violated the author’s rights under articles 7, 9 and 26 of the Covenant. I am writing separately to explain the basis for finding the State party’s refusal to investigate the gang rape to be in violation of the right to an effective remedy (see para 12.5 of the communication). 2. Pursuant to article 2 (3) (a) of the Covenant, each State party undertakes to ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms are violated shall have an effective remedy. In its general comment No. 20, the Committee has explained that complaints against ill-treatment prohibited by article 7 “must be investigated promptly and impartially by competent authorities so as to make the remedy effective”. Accordingly, the Committee has recognized in Maharjan v. Nepal that the State party’s 35-day statutory limit from the event of torture or the date of release for bringing claims under the Compensation relating to Torture Act is in itself flagrantly inconsistent with the gravity of the crime. 1 3. According to the author’s uncontested submission, the State party provides for a 35day statute of limitation also in section 11 of the chapter on rape in the Muluki Ain for reporting the crime of rape. This period is equally unreasonably short because of the gravity of the crime and the trauma suffered by victims as a result of the rape. It is therefore in violation of the right to an effective remedy for ill-treatment prohibited by article 7. Though it is doubtful whether the 35-day time limit, which applies to torture and rape alike and irrespective of gender, constitutes also in itself a gender-based discrimination, its application to the author is clearly in violation of her right to an effective remedy against the gang rape that she was subjected to and which the Committee found to be in violation of her rights under Article 26. 4. In other words, it is not in general the disproportionately negative effect of the statutory limitation (as pointed out in para. 12.5) which leads to a violation of the author’s rights under article 2 (3), read in conjunction with article 26, but the refusal by the authorities to investigate the gender-based crimes that the author was subjected to (see para. 12.4). After all, the excessively short period also applied to serious crimes other than rape, thus challenging its qualification as gender-based. 5. The finding of a violation in the present case thus should not suggest that disproportionate effects of legislation as such are sufficient to find laws per se in violation of article 26, read alone or in conjunction with article 2 (3) of the Covenant. Such an assumption would not only be premature but also unnecessary given that the failure to investigate the author’s allegations in the present case clearly reveals a violation of article 2 (3), read in conjunction with article 26, of the Covenant. For that reason, the Committee would be better advised to focus on each individual victim rather than on feeble general statements, which lack the necessary persuasiveness. 1 See communication No. 1863/2009, Maharjan v. Nepal, Views adopted on 19 July 2012, para 7.6.