You can engage with Treaty Bodies in all areas of their work – periodic reviews, individual communications, general comments, inquiries, as well as early warnings and urgent actions.
This and the next section focus on:
Individual communications or complaints submitted to Treaty Bodies can be a very useful tool for victims and human rights defenders to get redress and reparations for human rights violations.
You can submit information to the Treaty Bodies and request that the experts take the matters up with governments.
Below you will find questions to help you consider why individual communications might be useful to your advocacy, followed by some examples of how other human rights defenders have done so.
For more information on what they are, see ISHR Academy: Individual communications – What can Treaty Bodies do?
Examples of using individual communications:
In 2007, Alexander Gerasimov was detained and tortured by local police in Kostanay, Kazakhstan, who were attempting to force a confession. In hearing about his torture and the failure of the authorities to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, an international NGO submitted his case to CAT.
The Committee found that Kazakhstan had violated Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture and called for reparation to be provided to the victim. Complying with the CAT decision, Kazakhstan subsequently provided reparation to the victim in the amount of $13,000 USD. The Kazak Courts, when reviewing the case, considered that the Committee’s decision was binding on the State, imposing an obligation on the State to take measures to award compensation.
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More information:
In a compilation of good practices of making use of Treaty Bodies, the UNHCR highlights three instances (country anonymous sometimes) in which asylum seekers were able to avoid refoulement thanks to favourable decisions from the Committees. In all three documented examples, asylum seekers obtained interim measures from the Treaty Body allowing the individual complainant to stay in the country of asylum.
For more details, see section 7, page 44 of the UNHCR report "Compilation of good practices on Engaging with Human Rights Systems" (2022).
ISHR together with ACAT-France, the League for the Protection of Sahrawi Political Prisoners in Moroccan Prisons (LPPS) and a group of lawyers have submitted four complaints before the CAT on behalf of four Sahrawi human rights defenders who have endured severe acts of torture at the hands of the Moroccan authorities. The petitions built on the recent findings of the Committee that Morocco had breached the Convention in relation to four similar cases concerning Sahrawi political prisoners. Petitioners obtained the adoption of protection measures by the Committee while the cases were being reviewed, and the collective submission gained substantial media coverage.
Norma in Ecuador, and Susana and Lucía in Nicaragua, were still children when they became pregnant after sexual violence. Instead of receiving protection and care, they were denied access to abortion and forced into pregnancy and motherhood, with long-lasting impacts on their lives, health and education. With no justice at home, their cases were taken to the UN Human Rights Committee through the individual communications procedure. In a landmark 2025 decision, the Committee ruled that Ecuador and Nicaragua violated the girls’ rights, including the right to life with dignity and the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The Committee ordered both States to provide reparations and ensure access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care so that no girl is ever forced to become a mother again. This case shows how individual communications can deliver justice and accountability when national systems fail — and help change laws and lives. In June 2025, a similar decision was made on Guatemala with the support of the civil society movement ‘Son niñas, no madres’ (they are child, not mothers).
In March 2022, CEDAW found that Sri Lanka has breached the rights of Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, the founder and Executive Director of Equal Ground, an organisation defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Sri Lanka. As a result of the amended Penal Code, she has been under constant risk of arrest, detention and investigation of her private life and has had to modify her behaviour. Flamer-Caldera brought her case to CEDAW and claimed that the criminalisation of female same-sex sexual activity and the concomitant potential for arrest and prosecution amount to discrimination on the grounds of gender and sexual orientation, violating her right to non-discrimination.
CEDAW found that the Sri Lankan authorities had not taken any legal or other measures to respect and protect Flamer-Caldera’s right to a life free from gender-based violence or to eliminate the prejudices to which she has been exposed as a woman, lesbian and activist. The Committee urged Sri Lanka to decriminalise same-sex sexual conduct and requested that the State take immediate and effective action to stop the threats, harassment and abuse, which Flamer-Caldera has been subjected to, and to take criminal procedures to hold those responsible to account.
In 2023, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Penal Code (Amendment) Bill 2023, whose stated objective is to repeal provisions that make sexual orientation a punishable offense. While this ruling marks an important step forward, it signals that there is still more work to be done to ensure the fulfillment of human rights.
Go to the next section for tips on how to submit an individual communication to a Treaty Body.
