CEDAW/C/51/D/25/2010
2000 but decided to end it because of his violence towards her. In 2005, her former spouse
renewed contact with her and began to harass her, to the point that her life was in danger.
After a particularly violent incident in November 2006, she filed a complaint against her
former spouse. She also lodged a complaint against him with the municipal authorities in
her city, Córdoba, and appeared on the Televisa television channel to complain about him.
Her plight is known to many people in Córdoba. The author therefore decided to leave the
country and to seek asylum in Canada in order to escape her former spouse.
2.2
The author arrived in Canada with her son. On 17 November 2006, she applied for
refugee status on the ground of fear based on membership of a particular social group,
namely women victims of domestic violence in Mexico. On 22 May 2008, the Refugee
Protection Division decided that the author was not a refugee as defined in the Convention
relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951. Her request for leave and judicial review was
rejected on 15 September 2008. On 4 November 2008, the author submitted a request for a
pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA), which was rejected on 7 April 2009. A request for
leave and judicial review was submitted to the Federal Court on 20 May 2009, which the
latter rejected on 18 January 2010. Prior to that, a request to postpone the deportation had
been submitted in June 2009 and granted on 2 July 2009. The decision of 18 January 2010
rejecting her request for review brought to an end the proceedings before the domestic
courts. The author did not submit an application for reconsideration on humanitarian
grounds owing to the cost of the procedure and the low rate of acceptance of such
applications. Furthermore, the author claims that the case file would inevitably be based on
the same evidence of risk.
The complaint
3.1
The author considers that the State party violated article 2 (c) and (d), article 3,
article 15 and article 16 of the Convention.
3.2
The author maintains that her deportation to Mexico would entail a violation of the
right to life without discrimination, the right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment for
being a woman, the right to privacy and the right to family protection. She maintains that
her deportation to Mexico, where she is at risk of being detained in inhumane conditions or
even being killed or assaulted by her former spouse, a member of the judicial police,
constitutes a violation of her fundamental rights. According to the author, the State party is
of the view that the State of Mexico protects women who are victims of abuse, whereas all
human rights organizations and institutions that help women say the opposite. The author
argues that abuses against women go unpunished and that the corruption and hostility of the
judicial institutions make internal flight within Mexico impossible.1
3.3
With regard to article 2 (c), the author considers that the State party did not provide
her with adequate legal protection. First of all, she claims that her application for refugee
status was rejected on the basis of weak arguments, given that the State party’s underlying
assumption was that the protection system in Mexico was adequate. Secondly, the PRRA
decision allegedly did not give any weight to the documents provided attesting to the lack
of protection for women in Mexico, including a letter from the Mouvement contre le viol et
1
GE.12-41804
In support of her argument, the author cites article 3.4 of the regional file on Mexico, information
request MEX36237.EF, entitled: “Mexique: La violence conjugale et les recours offerts, en particulier
dans les cas où l’agresseur est membre du service de police (1996–2000)”; and “Mexique: des
autorités incapables d’arrêter les enlèvements et meurtres de femmes à Ciudad Juarez et Chihuahua”,
published by Amnesty International in 2003. The author also refers to the decision of the Federal
Court of Canada of 8 February 2010 in the case of Garcia Bautista v. Canada (Citizenship and
Immigration), 2010 FC 126.
3