CAT/C/60/D/602/2014
6.6
The State party submits that, according to the information provided by the
complainant, the complainant has not been a member of any political associations or
organizations, nor was he contacted by the authorities prior to the incident claimed by the
complainant to have occurred in 2007, which incident the majority of the members of the
Refugee Appeals Board could not accept as a fact. Residence under section 7 of the Aliens
Act cannot be justified by the circumstances that the complainant is an ethnic African and
initially originated from Darfur. It has not been rendered probable that the complainant
would attract the attention of the Sudanese authorities merely as a consequence of his longterm stay abroad. Accordingly, the State party finds that the complainant appears as a very
low-profile individual for the Sudanese authorities and that he would not risk abuse on his
entry into the Sudan. As regards the complainant’s references to a number of other
communications, the State party submits that those communications concerned asylum
seekers from other countries and that no parallels between the circumstances of the
complainant’s case and the circumstances of those cases have been identified. It therefore
finds that those references cannot lead to a different assessment of the complainant’s case.
6.7
The State party refers to the Views adopted by the Human Rights Committee in the
cases of P.T. v. Denmark, 22 K v. Denmark 23 and N v. Denmark. 24 It maintains that the
complainant’s communication merely reflects that he disagrees with the assessment of his
specific circumstances and the background information made by the Refugee Appeals
Board in his case. The complainant also failed to identify any irregularity in the decisionmaking process or any risk factors that the Board had failed to take properly into account.
Therefore, the State party reiterates that the complainant is in fact trying to use the
Committee as an appellate body to have the factual circumstances which he advocated in
support of his claim for asylum reassessed by the Committee. Furthermore, it reiterates that
the Committee must give considerable weight to the findings of fact made by the Board,
which is better placed to assess the factual circumstances of the complainant’s case.25
Issues and proceedings before the Committee
Consideration of admissibility
7.1
Before considering any complaint submitted in a communication, the Committee
must decide whether it is admissible under article 22 of the Convention. The Committee has
ascertained, as it is required to do under article 22 (5) (a) of the Convention, that the same
matter has not been and is not being examined under another procedure of international
investigation or settlement.
7.2
The Committee recalls that, in accordance with article 22 (5) (b) of the Convention,
it shall not consider any communication from an individual unless it has ascertained that the
individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies. The Committee notes that, in the
present case, the State party does not contest that the complainant has exhausted all
available domestic remedies.
7.3
The Committee recalls that, for a claim to be admissible under article 22 of the
Convention and rule 113 (b) of its rules of procedure, it must rise to the basic level of
substantiation required for purposes of admissibility. 26 The Committee notes the State
party’s argument that the communication is manifestly ill-founded owing to a lack of
substantiation. The Committee considers, however, that the arguments put forward by the
complainant raise substantive issues under article 3 of the Convention, and that those
22
23
24
25
26
See Human Rights Committee communication No. 2272/2013, P.T. v. Denmark, Views adopted on 1
April 2015, para. 7.3.
See Human Rights Committee communication No. 2393/2014, K v. Denmark, Views adopted on 16
July 2015, paras. 7.4 and 7.5.
See Human Rights Committee communication No. 2426/2014, N v. Denmark, Views adopted on 23
July 2015, para. 6.6.
The State party provides statistics on the case law of the Danish immigration authorities, which show,
inter alia, the recognition rates for asylum claims from the 10 largest national groups of asylum
seekers decided by the Refugee Appeals Board between 2013 and 2015.
See, inter alia, communication No. 308/2006, K.A. et al. v. Sweden, decision adopted on 16 November
2007, para. 7.2.
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