Where can individual complaints be filed?
Individual complaints, also known as "communications" and "petitions", are filed with the Petitions Unit of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Communications must be submitted in writing in one of the UN's six working languages, namely Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The person who drafts and files a complaint is known as the "author", and the child whose rights have been violated is often referred to as the "victim". Child victims can also be thought of as "complainants", and are empowered to prepare and submit complaints without the assistance of a separate author.
What does a complaint look like?
Complaints don't have to be written in any specific way, but must fully set out the case for review and supply certain basic details about the authors and victims involved. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides general guidance on submitting communications to UN treaty bodies, and also offers a model complaint form. When a complaint is filed, the Petitions Unit will make sure that it contains all of the information required for consideration, and can reach out to authors as necessary to request more details in an appropriate, accessible way. Once the complaint is complete, the Unit will then pass it along to the relevant UN "treaty body" to determine whether it can be reviewed.
What is a treaty body?
Treaty bodies are groups of independent experts at the UN, each associated with a particular international human rights convention. Treaty bodies are responsible for monitoring whether countries that have ratified a convention, known as "States parties", live up their responsibilities. Some treaty bodies can also receive complaints about violations of rights in the conventions they oversee, as is the case with the CRC communications procedure. Importantly, any treaty body can review complaints that are submitted by children. Where a complaint alleges violations of the CRC or its two substantive Optional Protocols, though, it will be examined by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
What is the Committee on the Rights of the Child?
The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the treaty body responsible for monitoring the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee has been in existence for as long as the Convention itself, and is tasked with reviewing the children's rights record of every country that has ratified the CRC or its substantive Optional Protocols. The Committee is made up of 18 children's rights experts, and currently meets 3 times a year. The Committee oversees the "periodic reporting procedure" for the CRC, during which governments provide information about national laws, policies and programmes that relate to children's rights and the Committee responds with recommendations to improve respect for these rights.
The Committee also presides over the CRC Complaints Mechanism, and holds the primary responsibility for reviewing communications about violations of children's rights. The Optional Protocol sets out the basic framework for reviewing complaints, and the Committee's Rules of Procedure more clearly set out how complaints are processed. Once a communication reaches the Committee for consideration, the Optional Protocol and Rules of Procedure together determine whether and how it will be admitted and examined.