When does the CRC complaints mechanism go into effect?
The CRC complaints mechanism began to operate on 14 April 2014 or three months after the tenth government ratified the Optional Protocol on a communications procedure, which occurred on 14 January 2014. Further governments may join at any time, although there will be a similar three-month waiting period before the Committee can start to receive complaints filed against them. For all countries, communications can only relate to violations of children's rights that happen after the complaints mechanism enters into force. In other words, children can't complain about violations of their rights that have already happened unless these violations continue after the communications procedure goes into effect for the government in question.
When will a complaint be accepted for review?
Complaints are not accepted by for review until "domestic remedies have been exhausted." This means that complainants must first try to resolve matters in a government's national justice system before they can bring the situation to the Committee's attention. Often this requires filing a claim in court and pursuing the case until it can no longer be appealed. Once domestic remedies have been exhausted, complainants will usually then have one year to raise violations with the Committee. The Committee will also not accept matters for review if they have already been submitted to or examined by another international communications procedure.
There are, however, exceptions to both the exhaustion of remedies requirement and the time limit for filing a complaint. Notably, complainants don't have to pursue their cases in national courts where domestic remedies are "unreasonably prolonged" or "unlikely to bring effective relief." This might be the case where it can be shown that the national justice system is corrupt or that it would take an exceptionally long time to receive a response from the courts. In addition, the Committee may accept communications more than one year after the exhaustion of domestic remedies where the author can demonstrate that it wasn't possible to file a complaint within this time limit.
When will a complaint be reviewed?
The Petitions Unit at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights does an initial screening of every complaint received to make sure that it gives the Committee all the information it will need to assess the situation. When this has been confirmed, complaints pass through two stages of review. In the first phase, the Committee determines "admissibility", and looks at whether a complaint meets all the requirements set out in the Optional Protocol and Rules of Procedure. Once the Committee is satisfied that a communication is admissible, it can then move on to examine the complaint "on the merits." During this stage, the Committee will determine whether the events described in the complaint amount to a violation of children's rights and, if so, what should be done to remedy it.
The admissibility and merits of a complaint are typically examined in the same review process, but it is possible for the Committee to separately determine a complaint's admissibility before engaging in any discussions on its merits. No matter what, where the Committee decides that a complaint is inadmissible, this decision and the reasons behind it are sent out to the parties. If the author of the complaint can later confirm in writing that these reasons no longer hold true, the Committee also has the power to reconsider its decision and admit the complaint for review on the merits.
What happens if there are urgent concerns?
If it appears that a child victim is in serious danger, the Committee may ask a government to take what are known as "interim measures". These are designed to ensure that victims are not permanently harmed before the Committee has time to finish reviewing a complaint on the merits. The Committee actively monitors compliance with all requests for interim measures, and can revisit the suitability of these measures as it sees fit. Importantly, interim measures can only be requested in what are termed "exceptional circumstances", and the Committee's asking for interim measures does not necessarily mean that children's rights have been violated.