Scottish Human Rights Law Group

INTRODUCTION TO THE INDIVIDUAL COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW MECHANISMS

By Kasey Lowe

Each of the nine core United Nations human rights treaties has an embedded oversight body comprised of experts in the field specific to that treaty.  These individuals and their work on the committees are not representative of their home governments and though the considerations for committee members vary slightly among the treaties they each require experts of high moral standing who are chosen for their knowledge in the field.  Other considerations include geographical distributions and the varied types of civilizations.  Each State party nominates one, two in the case of the Human Rights Committee, experts from their State and vote is taken by secret ballot.  These requirements help to ensure impartiality of the committees and discourage committees weighted in favour of a particular region.

Though no two of these treaty bodies are identical, they all share a main purpose which is to receive, review and comment upon the periodic reports States parties must submit as part of their obligations under the treaties.  In addition to this function, six of the nine core treaties also provide for their respective treaty bodies to receive individual communications (complaints) alleging violations of their rights by a State party if that State party has declared its recognition of the treaty body’s competency to do so.  This declaration will be made either pursuant to the original treaty text or by subscription to an optional protocol.

The following six treaties provide a mechanism for recognising the competency of their associated treaty body to receive individual communications:

With the exception of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which opens for signature on 24 September 2009, all of these committees have received the required number of declarations recognising their competency to review individual communications—though nowhere near 100% participation from the States parties to the treaties.  In order for a communication to be considered admissible, generally, the following conditions must be met:

1. The State party alleged to have violated the right which is the subject of the communication must have declared that it recognises the competency of the respective committee to receive individual communications;
2. All domestic remedies must have been exhausted prior to filing the communication except where the application of domestic remedies is unreasonably prolonged or unlikely be bring effective relief;
3. The incident(s) alleged must not have been the subject of a prior or current international investigation or settlement;
4. The communication cannot be anonymous;
5. The facts of the subject of the communication must not have occurred before recognition of the committee’s competence took effect.

The success of these treaty bodies as mechanisms for receiving individual complaints is the incentive to States parties to adopt stronger national protection mechanisms and they are essential if human rights are going to be turned into legal realities. 

As of July 2009, the United Kingdom recognizes only the competency of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to receive individual complaints.  In February 2009 the United Kingdom signed the Optional Protocol which would give the Committee on Rights of Persons with Disabilities competency to receive individual communications regarding the Disabilities Convention, however, it has not yet been ratified and is, therefore, not yet effective with respect to the United Kingdom.[1]