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 of human rights violations 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.
A victim of police violence tried to get reparation and compensation unsuccessfully at national level. Once she had exhausted domestic remedies in Australia, she filed an individual communication in 2009 with the Human Rights Committee (HR Ctte). The Committee found a violation of the ICCPR including the right to an effective remedy, and recommended reform be implemented in the Australian state where the violation took place, as well as compensation to the victim. As a consequence, the State party not only acknowledged the violation, but provided the victim with a full reparation, and amended their legislation to avoid repetition of similar violations.
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 September 2016, the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) took the unprecedented step of requesting protection measures as a consequence of ongoing reprisals and intimidations faced by the complainants, their family members, and their advocates in a case of arbitrary detention and torture of four individuals by Mexican soldiers.
The victims had submitted an individual communication to the CAT in March 2012, and CAT adopted a decision finding violations of several provisions of the Convention against Torture in August 2015. The Committee had already requested Mexico to adopt interim measures in October 2013 to provide the appropriate specialised medical care and support required by one of the victims for injuries he sustained to his ears as a result of torture, which Mexico did not comply with.
Go to the next section for tips on how to submit an individual communication to a Treaty Body.
