CEDAW/C/49/D/23/2009 confirmed by the head of the Interior Department of Lenin District in his letters to the author dated 7 August 2008 and 8 September 2008. The author claims that these circumstances constitute discrimination against the women who would have wished to work in IVS facilities as police officers, warders or security guards, and is a violation of the State party’s obligation to ensure to women, on equal terms with men, the right to participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government, as set out in article 7 (b) of the Convention. Furthermore, this circumstance demonstrates discrimination against the author on the basis of her sex during her detention in a facility staffed exclusively by male personnel, because this inevitably led to the impairment of her rights and freedoms, especially of her right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to humane treatment and respect for her dignity, as prescribed in articles 7 and 10 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. She recalls the following concrete facts which impaired her rights under articles 7 and 10 (1) of the Covenant, violations that affected her to a greater degree than the male prisoners of the same IVS facility: (a) The possibility of male staff to observe her through the door peephole and video surveillance, including when she was dressing or using the toilet; (b) The prison personnel’s attitude at the time of her admission to the detention facility, when she was inappropriately touched by a male guard and threatened with being stripped naked; (c) The guards’ statements that she would be “taken out and shot”; (d) The guards’ mockery when she was reading standing next to the light bulb and their statements that she needed “to see a psychiatrist”; (e) The guards’ practice of calling her “the fourth” when addressing her instead of using her name; male detainees were not treated in such a manner; (f) The guard’s mockery at the reaction of her cellmates when he threw a dead rat into their cell in order to scare them; (g) The insults of the head of the detention facility, who entered the office during the meeting with her lawyer screaming that she had “put blue ribbons all over the city”. When the lawyer asked him to show more respect for a woman, the head of the detention facility said she was “not a woman” and verbally insulted her. 5.6 The author considers that the above facts constitute inhuman and degrading treatment of her and discrimination against her on the basis of her sex, in the sense of article 1 of the Convention. She claims that such actions were possible because of the exclusively male composition of the personnel. The State party was under an obligation to provide better conditions for her detention than for men, in view of the fact that she is a young woman of reproductive age. The detention in a cold cell and in poor sanitary conditions was more detrimental to her health than to that of male prisoners. She fell ill while in detention and her condition required medical assistance. The author draws the Committee’s attention to the fact that the State party in its observations has failed to address her specific claims under the Convention and limited itself to commenting only on the conditions of detention. 5.7 By her submission of 17 March 2011, the author informs the Committee about changes that have been made in the personnel policy of the IVS facility of the 8 11-51730