Guidance for Submitting an Individual Communication to the UN Treaty Bodies

The complainant is the person submitting the communication to the Committee, usually alleging a violation of his/her own rights. In such cases, the complainant at the same time is the victim.

The complainant is referred by most Committees as “author” in their final decisions.

A complainant may also be acting on behalf of another person who cannot submit the complaint for justified reasons (for e.g. for being dead, disappeared or held in incommunicado detention), as long as the complainant is a family member of the victim or can otherwise justify a legitimate interest. The complainant must explain in detail why the alleged victim(s) cannot provide their consent.

The complainant may be represented, either by a person (legal counsel or representative) or by an organization (human rights organization, for e.g.).

It is not necessary to have a lawyer prepare the complaint, though legal advice may improve the quality of the submissions. Any person or organization acting on behalf of a complainant must submit a document authorizing them to submit the complaint to the Treaty Body (no formalities required).

Complainants must be aware that the United Nations does not provide legal aid under these procedures.

The communication must not be anonymous. The identity of the complainant and/or victim and their contact information need to be provided to the Committees and are generally necessary for the State Party to be able to respond to the allegations. Anonymous communications will not be accepted. However, the representative, complainant and/or the victim(s) may request that their identity is not disclosed in the Committee’s final decision. Final decisions adopted by the Committees are made public. Therefore, if anyone does not wish their identity to be disclosed in final decisions, they should indicate this at the earliest opportunity. Owing to the level of publicity that the decisions usually receive (including dissemination via the Internet, which makes it virtually impossible to correct and/or delete data), it may not be possible for the United Nations to satisfy requests for anonymity submitted after the publication of final decisions.

If the same case has been submitted to another Treaty Body or to a regional mechanism, such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, or the African Commission or Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the majority of Committees cannot examine the communication.

The Human Rights Committee, however, may consider such case as long as it is no longer pending consideration before the other instance of international settlement and the concerned State party has not opposed this at the time of ratification or accession. Please provide the application submitted to the other procedure and its decisions, if any. Failure to provide such information might be regarded as abuse of the right of submission.

This rule does not apply to individual communications submitted to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Complainants should provide a summary of the main facts of the case, in chronological order, including the dates, and information on administrative/judicial remedies.

Please focus on the facts of the individual case. Information referring to the general context should be included only if relevant, and as briefly as possible.

Do not include allegations of violations under facts. These should be included in section 7 below.

Complainants can include attachments with any additional, chronologically-ordered factual information, but the form, respecting the word limits, should be self-sufficient for the purposes of registering the complaint and transmitting it to the State party for observations on the admissibility and merits.

Complainants must include information on steps taken to exhaust domestic remedies.

Please describe, in chronological order, each step taken by the alleged victim(s) to raise their claims before courts and/or administrative authorities. Please describe the date and content of each submission, the authority to which it was submitted, the date of the decision, and the reason(s) for the decision.

If domestic remedies have not been exhausted, please state why.

Complainants must have first 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 national court system until the highest instance, unless complainants can justify that such remedies are unduly prolonged or otherwise ineffective, or that they are unavailable to the complainant. Detailed reasons must be provided as to why the complainant considers that the general rule should not apply. Mere doubts about the effectiveness of a remedy do not dispense with the obligation to exhaust it.

Please do not include your claims in this part as this should be included in section 7 below.

It is important to submit the complaint as soon as possible after domestic remedies have been exhausted. Delays in doing so may make it difficult for the State party to respond properly and for the Committee to evaluate the facts thoroughly. In some cases, submission after a protracted period may result in the case being considered an abuse of the right to petition and therefore inadmissible.

Time limits to submit a complaint from the moment of exhaustion of domestic remedies vary depending on the Committee:

• CERD: 6 months
• CESCR and CRC: 1 year
• CCPR: 5 years

There is no fixed time limit for submitting a communication to other Committees.

Please note that complainants must provide copies of domestic decisions and their full translation if they are not in English, French, Russian or Spanish. Please note that translations do not need to be official or comply with any formality. In case the decisions or translations are not provided, the Secretariat will not process your complaint.

Complainants should state why they consider that the facts described constitute a violation of their rights under the treaty in question. Complainants are encouraged to cite specific treaty articles, in particular if they are represented by a lawyer. Complainants are required to specify the rights set out in the treaty that have allegedly been violated and how the State party, through the facts described, has violated them. It is also advisable to indicate the specific remedies that the author would like to obtain from the State party, should the Committee conclude that the facts before it disclose a violation.

Lack of sufficient substantiation of facts and allegations may result in the rejection of the registration of a complaint.

Interim or provisional measures may be adopted in urgent cases to request that the State Party in question adopt measures to prevent irreparable harm to the alleged victim while the case is pending consideration by the Committee.

“Irreparable harm” refers to a harm which, due to its nature, cannot be susceptible to reparation. Complainants requesting interim measures must demonstrate the risk is real and that, should it materialize, the damage would be irreparable. They must also demonstrate that the risk is personal (and not merely based on a general context) and that the risk is imminent. Typical interim measures include, for example, the suspension of the execution of a death sentence or of the suspension of deportation to a country where the author faces a risk of torture or ill treatment.

Any such request should reach the Secretariat as early as possible before the action that the complainant is seeking to prevent could materialize and at least three working days before the alleged harm.

Complainants or their representatives may also, at any stage of the process, request the adoption of protection measures to protect individuals involved in the communication from reprisals, including lawyers, witnesses and family members. The risk must relate to the filing of the complaint to the Treaty Bodies. This request may even be submitted in the context of the procedure of follow up to views (after the adoption of a decision finding a violation).

Complainants may ask the Committee to request interim or protection measures at any time before the adoption of a final decision (often called “Views”).

Only to be filled with information that is not contained in the other parts of the form.

The complaint should be coherent, typed, and signed. Complaints need to be submitted using the Petitions online portal or, exceptionally, if you encounter technical difficulties, via email to ohchr-petitions@un.org using only this online form. In case the complaint is sent via email, it should have an electronic signature or be signed manually, scanned and attached. An unsigned word version should also be submitted. No paper communications will be processed unless it is justified that it would be impossible to submit the communication electronically.

Annexes should also be in one of the Secretariat’s working languages (English, French, Russian or Spanish). If annexes are not in one of these languages, an unofficial translation of the full document should be provided. If submitting via the post, only copies should be submitted, not originals. No documents will be returned.

Annexes should include any decision adopted at the national or international levels, as well as other relevant official documents, such as medical reports.

A list of annexes submitted should be provided. The documents should be listed in the order presented in the complaint, numbered consecutively, titled in accordance with their content, and adequately referenced in the body of your complaint (including number of annex and page).

If the description of facts or claims is unclear or lacks essential information to be processed under the individual communications procedures, the Secretariat will not be in a position to process the complaint.

Complaints that are rejected for lacking essential documentation need to be fully resubmitted, including referring to the new documentation in the body of the complaint and in the list of annexes. Documents submitted separately via email or further allegations in the body of an email after complaints have been rejected will not be considered.