CEDAW/C/62/D/53/2013 that the author would be exposed to a real, personal and fore seeable risk of serious forms of gender-based violence in case of return to Pakistan. 10. In the light of the above findings, the Committee will not examine separately the author’s allegations under articles 3, 12, 15 and 16 of the Convention. 11. Acting under article 7 (3) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention, and in the light of all the above considerations, the Committee is of the view that the State party has failed to fulfil its obligations and has thereby violated the rights of the author under articles 2 (c) and (d) of the Convention. The Committee therefore makes the following recommendations to the State party: (a) Concerning the author of the communication: refrain from forcibly returning the author to Pakistan, where she would be at real, p ersonal and foreseeable risk of being subjected to severe forms of gender -based violence, taking also into account that her husband and two minor children are permanent residents of Denmark; (b) In general, and in line with the Committee’s general recomme ndation No. 32, the Committee requests the State party: (i) To take all measures necessary to prevent similar violations in the future; (ii) To take all measures necessary to ensure that victims of gender -related forms of persecution who are in need of protection, regardless of their status or residence, are not returned under any circumstance to any country in which their life would be at risk or where they might be subjected to gender -based violence, or to torture or ill-treatment; (iii) To adopt gender-sensitive procedural safeguards in asylum procedures to ensure that women asylum seekers are able to present their case on the basis of equality and non-discrimination. That includes that interviewers use techniques and procedures that are sensitive to gender, age and other intersectional grounds of discrimination and disadvantage that compound the human rights violations that women refugees and asylum seekers experience; that a supportive interview environment is established so that the claimant can provide her account, including disclosure of sensitive and personal information, especially for survivors of trauma, torture and/or ill -treatment and sexual violence and that sufficient time is allocated for interviews; and that mechanisms for referral to psychosocial counselling and other support services, where necessary, both before and after the asylum interview, are made available; (iv) To ensure that the threshold for accepting asylum applications is measured not against the probability but against the reasonable likelihood that the claimant has a well-founded fear of persecution or that she would be exposed to persecution on return; (v) To ensure that, whenever necessary, examiners use all the means at their disposal to produce the necessary evidence in support of the application, including by seeking and gathering gender-relevant information from reliable governmental and non-governmental sources on human rights in the country of origin and taking all necessary measures in that regard; 15-21603 15/16