CEDAW/C/51/D/25/2010
left Canada using their own air tickets after confirming their departure with the Canadian
authorities. The same records indicate that their final destination was Mexico on a
Mexicana Airlines flight.
4.9
Given the author’s voluntary departure, the Committee should find the
communication inadmissible on the ground that it is moot, all the more so given that the
author departed voluntarily. The State party also notes that since the author’s departure to
Mexico in April 2010, it has not received any report, either directly from her representative
or from the Committee, stating that the author has suffered gender-based violence. The
State party considers that this reason is sufficient to resolve the issue of the admissibility of
the communication. However, it submits that the communication would have been
inadmissible even if the author had remained in Canada.
4.10 The State party is of the view that the author has not exhausted domestic remedies
under article 4, paragraph 1, of the Optional Protocol. First of all, under article 25 of the
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the author had the option of applying for visa
exemption and residence status and submitting a request for leave and judicial review to the
Federal Court of Canada in the event of a negative decision. Moreover, while the author
claims that the Canadian procedure for determining refugee status is discriminatory, she
never raised this issue during the internal procedure and did not attempt to lodge an appeal
on the basis of that claim, either pursuant to article 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to equality and protects against all forms of
discrimination based on the grounds listed or analogous grounds, including sex, or pursuant
to the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on 11 grounds. In
this regard, the State party cites the Committee’s jurisprudence in the case of N.S.F. v. The
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in which the Committee decided
that the author, who said that she feared for her life if returned to her country, should have
sought a domestic remedy for her allegations of sex discrimination and that the
communication was therefore inadmissible in accordance with article 4, paragraph 1, of the
Optional Protocol.3
4.11 The State party also maintains that the communication is inadmissible because it is
incompatible with the Convention, in accordance with article 4, paragraph 2 (b), of the
Optional Protocol. The State party points out in particular that the Convention does not
guarantee the right not to be returned to a country where there are substantial grounds for
believing that the person would face a real risk of a violation of the right to life, of being
subjected to torture, or of a violation of the right to protection against any inhuman or cruel
and unusual punishment, and that the Convention does not apply extraterritorially. Thus,
the articles cited by the author in her communication, namely articles 2 (c) and (d), 3, 15
and 16, do not guarantee an explicit right not to be returned to a country where the person is
at risk of suffering gender-based violence. Rather, these rights are guaranteed either by
article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment, or by articles 6 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. The Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee have
been very careful not to impose an implicit obligation not to return a person, except in cases
where there would be a serious violation of human rights, in order to limit the
extraterritorial effect of the obligations arising from human rights treaties.4
3
4
6
Communication No. 10/2005, inadmissibility decision of 30 May 2007, para. 7.3.
The State party cites the decision of the Human Rights Committee adopted on 25 July 2006 in the
case of Khan v. Canada, communication No. 1302/2004 (para. 5.6), which cites Human Rights
Committee general comment No. 31.
GE.12-41804