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TREATY BODIES

MEETINGS AND DEADLINES

STATE REPORTING TO TREATY BODIES

COMPLAINTS

DATABASES

Resources

Anyone may bring a human rights problem to the attention of the United Nations and thousands of people around the world do so every year. This page explains the procedures open to individuals who claim that they are a victim of a violation of rights contained in international human rights treaties.

It is through individual complaints that human rights are given concrete meaning. In the adjudication of individual cases, international norms that may otherwise seem general and abstract are put into practical effect. When applied to a real-life situation, the standards contained in international human rights treaties find their most direct application. The resulting body of decisions may guide States, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals in interpreting the contemporary meaning of the treaties concerned.

Individuals have increasingly acquired the means to vindicate their rights at the international level. This page examines complaints that are brought under international human rights treaties. Since the early 1970s, international complaint mechanisms have developed apace, and complainants can now bring claims to the United Nations concerning violations of their rights contained in the nine so-called ‘core’ human rights treaties.

The nine treaties concern:

  • (i) civil and political rights;
  • (ii) torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
  • (iii) racial discrimination; 
  • (iv) gender discrimination; 
  • (v) rights of persons with disabilities;
  • (vi) protection of all persons from enforced disappearance;
  • (vii) rights of migrants workers and members of their families;
  • (viii) economic, social and cultural rights; 
  • (ix) rights of the child.

The complaint mechanisms are designed to be accessible to the layperson. It is not necessary to be a lawyer or even familiar with legal and technical terms to bring a complaint under the treaties concerned.

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Documentation

Overview of the individual complaints procedure

A human rights treaty is an international agreement, which imposes binding obligations to protect and promote rights and freedoms on States that officially accept it (commonly through “ratification” or “accession”); those States are referred to as States parties to the treaty. For the full texts of the treaties, click here.

The basic concept of complaint mechanisms under the human rights treaties is that anyone may bring a complaint against a State party alleging a violation of treaty rights to the body of experts monitoring the treaty. These “treaty bodies”, as they are often called, are Committees composed of independent experts elected by States parties to the relevant treaty. They are tasked with monitoring implementation in States parties of the rights set forth in the treaties and with deciding on complaints brought against those States. While there are some procedural variations between the nine mechanisms, their design and operation are very similar. Accordingly, what follows is a general description of the typical features of a complaint under any of the nine treaties. Readers should then refer to the descriptions of the individual treaties, which identify aspects differing from the general norm.

Not all treaty body based complaint mechanisms have entered into force.Currently, eight of the human rights treaty bodies (CCPR, CERD, CAT, CEDAW, CRPD, CED, CESCR and CRC) may, under certain conditions, receive and consider individual complaints or communications from individuals:

How to submit a complaint

Please submit your complaint using the online submission portal.

A considerable number of other avenues exist for bringing individual complaints. Under the United Nations Secretariat, complainant can consider submitting a complaint before the Human Rights Council Complaint Procedure (previously known as 1503 procedure) and the mandate-holders (special rapporteurs and working groups) of the Human Rights Council. Moreover, complainants can consider submitting also complaints before the organizations forming part of the wider United Nations family such as the International Labour Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Against whom can a complaint under a treaty be brought?

A complaint under one of the nine treaties can be brought only against a State that satisfies two conditions:

  • It must be a party (through ratification or accession) to the treaty in question providing for the rights which have allegedly been violated (to check whether a State is party to a treaty, click here, then select the relevant treaty from the list).
  • The State party must have recognized the competence of the Committee monitoring the relevant treaty to receive and consider complaints from individuals.

Who can bring a complaint?

Anyone can lodge a complaint with a Committee against a State that satisfies these two conditions (being a party to the treaty and having accepted the Committee’s competence to examine individual complaints), claiming that his or her rights under the relevant treaty have been violated. It is not necessary to have a lawyer prepare the complaint, though legal advice may improve the quality of the submissions. Be aware, however, that legal aid is not provided under the procedures. One may also bring a claim on behalf of another person on condition that his/her written consent is obtained (without requirement as to its specific form). In certain cases, one may bring a case without such consent, for example, where a person is in prison without access to the outside world or is a victim of an enforced disappearance. In these cases, the author of the complaint should state clearly why such consent cannot be provided.

What information do you need to provide in your complaint?

While a complaint to a Committee, also called a ‘communication’ or a ‘petition’, need not be presented in a particular format, you are strongly encouraged to use the model complaint form. Your claim should be in writing, written legibly, preferably typed, and signed (complaints sent by email should be scanned).

Only communications presented in one of the UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) can be accepted.

The complaint should provide basic personal information - alleged victim’s name, nationality, date of birth, mailing address and email - and specify the State party against which the complaint is directed. If the complaint is brought on behalf of another person, proof of his/her consent should be provided (no specific form required) as noted above, or the author of the complaint should state clearly why such proof cannot be provided. If there are particularly sensitive matters of a private or personal nature that emerge in the complaint, the author of the complaint may request the Committee not to disclose his/her name or the alleged victim’s name and/or identifying elements in its final decision so that the identity of the alleged victim or that of the author does not become public. The Committee may also, at its own discretion, decide not to disclose these or other matters in the course of consideration of the complaint.

Final decisions adopted by the Committees are made public. Therefore, if complainants wish their identity not to be disclosed in the final decision, they are requested to so indicate as soon as possible. Due to the level of publicity the Committees’ decisions usually receive (including dissemination via Internet, which thus makes the correction and/or deletion of data circulating online virtually impossible), it may not be possible to satisfy requests for anonymity submitted after the publication of the Committees’ decisions.

Any subsequent change in address or other contact information should be notified as soon as possible.

Furthermore, it is essential to set out, in chronological order, all the facts on which the complaint is based. The account must be as complete as possible and contain all information relevant to the case. The complainant should also state why he/she considers that the facts described constitute a violation of the treaty in question. It is highly recommended to identify the rights set out in the treaty alleged to have been violated. It is also advisable to indicate the kind of remedies that the complainant would like to obtain from the State party in case the Committee concludes that the facts before it disclose a violation of his/her rights.

The complainant should also detail the steps taken to exhaust the remedies available in the State party against which the complaint is directed, that is steps taken before the State party’s local courts and authorities. The requirement to exhaust domestic remedies means that the claims must have been brought to the attention of the relevant national authorities, up to the highest available instance in the State concerned. If some of these remedies are pending or have not yet been exhausted it should also be indicated, as well as the reasons for it. The complainant should state whether he/she has submitted his/her case to another means of international investigation or settlement. On these two matters, see the section entitled “The admissibility of your case” below for further important details.

Complainants should supply copies of all documents (no originals, only copies) of relevance to their claims and arguments, especially administrative or judicial decisions on their claims issued by national authorities. If these documents are not in an official language of the United Nations, a full or summary translation of the documents must be submitted. The documents should be listed in order by date, numbered consecutively and accompanied by a concise description of their contents. The complaint should not exceed 50 pages (excluding annexes). When it exceeds 20 pages, it should also include a short summary of up to five pages highlighting its main elements. As noted above, the information must be provided in one of the UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).

If the complaint lacks essential information to be processed under these procedures or the description of facts is unclear, the complainant will be contacted by the secretariat of the United Nations (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR) with a request for additional details or resubmission. Complainants should be diligent in conducting correspondence with the secretariat and the information requested should be sent as soon as possible and no later than one year. If the information is not received within a year from the date of the request, the file will be closed.

When can you make a complaint under the human rights treaties?

It is important to submit the complaint as soon as possible after the exhaustion of domestic remedies. Delay in submitting the case may make it difficult for the State party to respond properly and for the treaty body to evaluate the factual background thoroughly. In some cases, submission after a protracted period may result in the case being considered inadmissible by the Committee in question:

  • According to the Human Rights Committee (the Rules of Procedure, Rule 96 (c)), a delay in submission will not automatically constitute an abuse of the right of submission. “(…) However, a communication may constitute an abuse of the right of submission, when it is submitted after 5 years from the exhaustion of domestic remedies by the author of the communication, or, where applicable, after 3 years from the conclusion of another procedure of international investigation or settlement, unless there are reasons justifying the delay taking into account all the circumstances of the communication”;
  • Article 14, paragraph 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, states that “In the event of failure to obtain satisfaction from the body established or indicated in accordance with paragraph 2 of this article, the petitioner shall have the right to communicate the matter to the Committee within six months”;
  • Article 3, paragraph 2(a) of the Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that “The Committee shall declare a communication inadmissible when: (a) It is not submitted within one year after the exhaustion of domestic remedies, except in cases where the author can demonstrate that it had not been possible to submit the communication within that time limit”;
  • Article 7 (h) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure states that: “The Committee shall declare a communication inadmissible when: (a) It is not submitted within one year after the exhaustion of domestic remedies, except in cases where the author can demonstrate that it had not been possible to submit the communication within that time limit”.

The complaint procedure

Based on the above mentioned requirements, the Committee will decide whether the case should be registered, that is to say formally listed as a case for consideration by the relevant Committee. You will receive advice on registration.

At that point, the case is normally transmitted to the State party concerned to give it an opportunity to comment. The State is requested to submit its observations within a set time frame. The two major stages in any case are known as the “admissibility” stage and the “merits” stage. The “admissibility” of a case refers to the formal requirements that a complaint must satisfy before the relevant Committee can consider its substance. The “merits” of the case are the substance, on the basis of which the Committee decides whether or not the alleged victim’s rights under a treaty have been violated. As a general rule, the Committees consider the admissibility jointly with the merits. These stages are described in greater detail below. Once the State replies to the complaint, the complainant is offered an opportunity to comment.

For most Committees, the State party is requested to provide observations within six months, as of the date when the complaint was communicated to that State. If the State party challenges the admissibility of the complaint it can do so by providing arguments within the first two months of that period. The complainant is always given the opportunity of commenting on the State party’s observations, within a set time frame.

When comments are received from both parties the case is ready for a decision by the relevant Committee. If the State party fails to respond to the complaint, even after receiving several reminders from the secretariat, the Committee will take a decision on the case based on the information submitted by the complainant.

Special circumstances of urgency or sensitivity

Some Committees may, at any stage before the case is considered, issue a request to the State party for “interim measures” in order to prevent any irreparable harm to the author or alleged victim in the particular case. Typically, such requests are issued to prevent actions that cannot later be undone, for example the execution of a death sentence or the deportation of an individual facing a risk of torture. A decision to issue a request for interim measures does not imply a determination on the admissibility or the merits of the communication but it must have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits for it to be concluded that the alleged victim would suffer irreparable harm. If the complainant wishes the Committee to consider a request for interim measures, he/she should state it explicitly, and explain in detail the reasons why such action is necessary.

It takes several working days for a Committee to process a request for interim measures. Any such request should therefore reach the Secretariat as early as possible before the action sought to be prevented could materialize.

A Committee may withdraw a request for interim measures on the basis of information received from the State party and the author/s of the complaint suggesting that such measures are no longer required.

The admissibility of the complaint

Before the Committee can consider a complaint on its merits or substance, it must be satisfied that the formal requirements of admissibility are met. When examining admissibility, the Committee may consider one or several of the following factors:

  • If the complainant acts on behalf of another person, has he/she obtained sufficient authorization or has he/she otherwise justified the reasons in doing so?;
  • Is the complainant (or the person on whose behalf the complaint is brought) a victim of the alleged violation? It has to be shown that the alleged victim is personally and directly affected by the law, policy, practice, act or omission of the State party which constitute the object of the complaint. It is not sufficient simply to challenge a law or State policy or practice in the abstract (a so-called actio popularis) without demonstrating how the alleged victim is individually affected;
  • Is the complaint compatible with the provisions of the treaty invoked? The alleged violation must relate to a right actually protected by the treaty. If the complainant has filed a complaint under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for example, he/she cannot claim a violation of the right to property since the Covenant does not protect that right. In such a case, the claim would be, in legal terms, inadmissible ratione materiae;
  • Is the Committee in question required to review the facts and evidence in a case already decided by national courts?The Committees are competent to consider possible violations of the rights guaranteed by the treaties concerned, but are not competent to act as an appellate instance with respect to national courts and tribunals. Thus, the Committees cannot in principle examine the determination of administrative, civil or criminal liability of individuals, nor can they review the question of innocence or guilt;
  • Is the complaint sufficiently substantiated? If the relevant Committee considers, in the light of the information before it, that the complainant has not sufficiently presented/ described the facts and arguments for a violation of the Covenant, it may reject the case as insufficiently substantiated, and thus inadmissible;
  • Does the complaint relate to events that occurred after the entry into force of the complaint mechanism for the State party concerned? As a rule, a Committee does not examine complaints where the facts occurred prior to this date. If this is the case, the complaint would be regarded as inadmissible ratione temporis. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, for instance in cases where the effects of the event in question result in a continuous violation of the treaty;
  • Has the same matter been submitted to another international body? If it has been submitted to another treaty body or to a regional mechanism such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, or the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Committees cannot examine the complaint. The aim of this rule is to avoid unnecessary duplication at the international level. This is an issue that the complainant should indicate in the original complaint, specifying the body to which it was submitted;
  • Have all domestic remedies been exhausted? A cardinal principle governing the admissibility of a complaint is that the complainant must have exhausted all relevant remedies that are available in the State party before bringing a claim to a Committee. This usually includes pursuing the claim through the local court system. The mere doubts about the effectiveness of a remedy do not, in the Committees’ view, dispense with the obligation to exhaust it. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, when proceedings at the national level have been unreasonably prolonged, or the remedies are unavailable or would plainly be ineffective. The complainant should, however, give detailed reasons why the general rule should not apply. On the issue of exhaustion of domestic remedies, the complainant should describe in his/her initial submission the efforts he/she has made to exhaust local remedies, specifying the claims advanced before the national authorities and the dates and outcome of the proceedings, or alternatively stating why any exception should apply;
  • Is the complaint precluded by a reservation made by the State to the treaty in question? Reservations are formal statements by which States limit the obligations that they accept under a particular provision of a treaty. A State may have entered a substantive reservation to the treaty or a procedural reservation to the complaint mechanism limiting the Committee’s competence to examine certain complaints. For example, States may preclude a Committee’s consideration of claims that have in the past been considered by another international mechanism (for reservations to a specific treaty, click here, then select the relevant Convention, the relevant State and scroll down to the Declarations and Reservations part);
  • Is the complaint an abuse of the procedure? In some cases, the Committees may consider the claims to be frivolous, vexatious or otherwise inappropriate use of the complaint procedure and reject them as inadmissible, for example if the same individual brings repeated claims to the Committee on the same issue when the previous identical ones have already been dismissed.

The merits of the complaint  

Once a Committee considers a complaint admissible, it proceeds to consider it on its merits, stating its reasons for concluding that a violation has or has not occurred under the applicable treaty provisions. As noted above, a number of States have also entered substantive reservations that may limit the scope of the human rights obligations they assume under the treaties. In most cases, a Committee will decline to consider complaints falling within areas covered by a reservation, though in exceptional circumstances, it may find a reservation impermissible and consider the case despite the purported reservation.

Information on what a Committee considers to be the scope of the rights contained in the treaty for which it is responsible can be found in its decisions on individual cases (see the treaty body documents search database or the webpage of each Committee), its so-called “General Comments” interpreting the meaning of various articles, and its concluding observations on reports submitted periodically by States parties to the treaty concerned (complainants may wish to consult the Universal Human Rights Index database). These documents are accessible on the OHCHR web site. There are also numerous academic articles and textbooks on the jurisprudence of the various Committees that may be of assistance.

Consideration of the complaint

The Committees consider each case in closed session. Although some Committees have provisions for oral components of proceedings in their rules of procedure (see the description below of the Committee against Torture and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination), the practice has been to consider complaints only on the basis of the written information supplied by the complainant and the State party. Accordingly, it has not been the practice to receive oral submissions from the parties or audio or audio-visual evidence (such as audio and video files). Nor do the Committees go beyond the information provided by the parties to seek independent verification of the facts.

As a general rule and in order to speed up the procedure, the Committees examine the admissibility of a complaint jointly with the merits. In this case, the general procedure set out above applies, that is, once the communication is received and registered, it is transmitted to the State party concerned to give it an opportunity to comment, within a set time frame. The complainant is then offered an opportunity to comment on the State party’s observations, following which the case is normally ready for consideration on admissibility and merits by the Committee. However, there are situations where the Committee decides to examine the admissibility first. In this case the State party is requested to make submissions on the merits if the Committee declares that the complaint is admissible. The complainant will in any case have the opportunity to comment on the State party’s submissions on the merits.

Once the Committee takes a decision on the case, it is transmitted to the complainant and the State party simultaneously. One or more Committee members may append a separate opinion to the decision if they come to a different conclusion from the majority or perhaps reach the same conclusion but for different reasons. The text of any final decision on the merits of the case or of a decision of inadmissibility will be posted on the OHCHR’s web site as part of the Committee’s jurisprudence.

What happens once a Committee decides a case?

It should be noted at the outset that there is no appeal against Committee decisions and that, as a rule, the decisions are final. What happens to the case subsequently depends on the nature of the decision taken.

  • When the Committee decides that the facts before it disclose a violation by the State party of the complainant’s rights under the treaty, it invites the State party to supply information within a set time frame on the steps it has taken to give effect to its findings and recommendations.
  • When the Committee decides that there has been no violation of the treaty or that the complaint is inadmissible, the case is closed.

The Committees’ decisions represent an authoritative interpretation of the treaty concerned. They contain recommendations to the State party. All Committees have developed procedures to monitor whether States parties have implemented their recommendations (so-called follow-up procedures), since they consider that by accepting the procedure, States parties have also accepted to respect the Committee’s findings.

When the Committee concludes that a violation of the Covenant has taken place, the State is invited to provide information, within 180 days, on the steps it has taken to implement the recommendations. The State’s response is then transmitted to the complainant for comments. If the State party fails to take appropriate action, the case is kept under consideration by the Committee under the follow-up procedure. A dialogue is thus pursued with the State party and the case remains open until satisfactory measures are taken. Information related to follow-up to the Committees’ Views and recommendations is not confidential and the meetings during which this information is discussed are public.

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