Why is it important to file a complaint?
First and foremost, filing a complaint with the CRC communications procedure gives child victims an opportunity to seek redress. Children face many barriers in accessing justice, and often have no way to bring violations of their rights to attention. The Committee can recognise the violations children have endured and provide recourse to a remedy where domestic courts fail. Among many other possible solutions, the Committee can recommend that governments offer child victims rehabilitation, reparation, financial compensation or guarantees of non-repetition.
How do complaints affect national governments?
Although complaints are limited to individual circumstances, they often indicate wider patterns of children's rights violations in a particular country. Complaints can draw attention to laws, policies and practices that violate children's rights and place pressure on governments to change these. In certain circumstances, the Committee can even explicitly recommend that a government amend its laws or revise its policies to prevent the same violations of children's rights from occurring in the future.
Similarly, the CRC complaints mechanism can push governments to improve children's access to justice in national courts. Because child complainants are required to exhaust domestic remedies, successful complaints often draw attention to flaws and gaps in domestic justice systems. By providing children with more effective ways to obtain redress on the national level, governments can avoid international complaints almost entirely. Complaints also inevitably raise the profile of children's rights with relevant national authorities, and can link in with larger civil society campaigns to encourage greater respect for the same.
How do complaints help the Committee on the Rights on the Child?
Complaints provide a means for the Committee to examine children's rights in real-world scenarios. Reviewing complaints can deepen its practical understanding of children's rights, and helps the Committee to clarify governments' obligations to respect these rights. As more and more complaints are filed, the Committee will also begin to develop what is known as the "jurisprudence" or "case law" of the CRC and its substantive Optional Protocols. These are terms to describe the full collection of the Committee's final decisions, and can guide the Committee in examining future complaints while at the same time giving child victims and governments a better sense of what kinds of complaints have been filed and what exactly makes for a violation of children's rights.