CEDAW/C/62/D/56/2013
1.3 On 29 January 2014, the Committee, acting through the Worki ng Group on
Communications, decided, pursuant to rule 66 of the Committee’s rules of
procedure, to consider the admissibility of the communication separately from its
merits.
Facts as submitted by the author
2.1 The author is a Pakistani national belonging to a Christian minority of AngloIndians who speak English as their mother tongue. She is the mother of seven adult
children. One of her daughters, P., is a resident of Denmark through marriage to a
Danish national. The author has another daughter, M.S. (the author of communication
No. 40/2012, which was found inadmissible by the Committee on 22 July 2013), who
arrived in Denmark in 2007 and applied for asylum in 2009 and whose asylum claim
was rejected.
2.2 The author travelled to Denmark on a valid visa on 3 April 2011. On 25 May,
she applied for asylum. In her application, she claimed that she had always been
subjected to discrimination as a Christian woman, referring to frequent incidents of
verbal assault in public (providing no further details) and the touching of her intimate
parts by unspecified individuals. She also informed the authorities that her daughter,
M.S., had been harassed by a Muslim man, A., who had connections to powerful
individuals within the police force in Pakistan and who wanted to convert her to
Islam. When her daughter had become a young woman, that discrimination had turned
into sexual harassment. The author also claimed that her son had been arrested “in
connection to Ramadan” in January 2010 and, after spending one day in p olice
detention, had been thrown on to the street and died in hospital on 12 January 2012
from kidney injuries. The author provided no further details about the alleged events.
2.3 On 23 September 2011, the Danish Immigration Service refused to grant asyl um
to the author. On 9 March 2012, the author’s appeal was rejected by the Danish
Refugee Appeals Board. The Board found that the author herself had not been
subjected to harassment from the man who allegedly had harassed her daughter and
that the general situation for Christians in Pakistan was not of such a nature that the
author should be considered persecuted under Danish asylum law.
2.4
The author notes that that decision is final and not subject to further appeal .
Complaint
3.
The author claimed that, if she were returned to Pakistan, the State party would
violate articles 1, 2, 3, 5 and 16 of the Convention and the Committee’s general
recommendation No. 19, without providing further details in support of her claim. She
alleged that she feared becoming a victim of continued harassment because of her
Christian background and because of her relationship to her daughter, who had been a
victim of sexual harassment by A.
State party’s observations on admissibility
4.1 The State party presented its observations through a note verbale on
10 September 2013 and informed the Committee that the author had been returned
to Pakistan on 13 July 2013.
4.2 The State party challenged the admissibility of the communication as bein g
manifestly ill-founded and insufficiently substantiated, under article 4 (2) (c) of the
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