CEDAW/C/69/D/85/2015 to the author’s Facebook account, she studied in Hargeysa, in north-western Somalia (see paras. 2.7, 3.6 and 4.6). 4.14 Against that background, the State party finds that the author would not be exposed to a real, personal and foreseeable risk of serious forms of gender-based violence or abuse by her family, the local community or others, including Al -Shabaab, upon her return to Somalia. 4.15 With regard to references to the Convention, the State party sub mits that the fact that the Board made no explicit reference to the Convention in its decision of 8 April 2015 in no way means that it failed to take the Convention into account, as the latter, along with other international human rights treaties, forms an integral part of its assessment of asylum cases. 4.16 The State party concludes that the Board, a collegial body of a quasi -judicial nature, thoroughly assessed the author’s credibility, the background information available and the author’s specific circumstances and found that she had failed to render it probable, should she and her son be returned to Somalia, that they would risk persecution or abuse justifying the granting of asylum. It adds that her communication has not brought to light any further information to substantiate her claim or that would justify granting asylum. The communication merely reflects her disagreement with the Board’s assessment of her credibility. She has failed to identify any irregularity in the decision-making process or any risk factors that the Board has failed to take properly into account. In fact, she is trying to use the Committee as an appellate body to have the factual circumstances submitted in support of her application for asylum reassessed. The State party submits that the Committee must give considerable weight to the facts found by the Board, which is better placed to assess the factual circumstances of the author’s case. There is, in the view of the State party, no basis for doubting, let alone setting aside, the Board’s assessment, according to which the author has failed to establish that there are substantial grounds for believing that she and her son would risk being subjected to persecution or asylum related abuse if returned to Somalia. Returning them, there fore, would not constitute a breach of the Convention. Author’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 5.1 On 29 February 2016, the author submitted her comments on the State party ’s observations on admissibility and the merits. 5.2 The author notes that the Refugee Appeals Board has reopened several cases concerning single refugee women from Somalia 11 and asked the Committee to suspend consideration of the respective communications, because it wished to reconsider its denial of asylum in those cases in the light of recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights. 12 The authorities have not, however, reopened the author’s case and she believes that the reason could be that the Government explicitly mentioned her communication during a first reading in the parliament of bill No. L97 as an example of a communication that should never have been registered with the Committee. 13 She therefore fears that her right to a fair hearing could be infringed and that the State party’s observations are bound to be biased. __________________ 11 12 13 18-06600 Reference is made to communication No. 93/2015, K.I.A. v. Denmark, discontinued on 23 November 2017. Reference is made to the Court’s judgment in R.H. v. Sweden (application No. 4601/14) of 10 September 2015. The author provides no further information on the contents and/or subject matter of the bill in question. 7/14