What happens after I make a complaint to a treaty body?
Once the UN receives your complaint, they will either:
- Refuse to review your complaint; or
- Contact you or the person who made the complaint to sort out the facts in your complaint or ask you for any missing important information; or
- Register your complaint to be reviewed by the Committee.
The UN will let you know what decision has been made about your complaint.
If your complaint is registered for review by the Committee:
If the Committee agrees to review your complaint, they will usually pass it on to the government you are complaining about. They will give the government a chance to respond within 6 months. You will also get the chance to respond to any arguments made by the government.
Once the Committee has a response from both sides, they will start their assessment of your complaint.
The assessment has two stages:
- Admissibility stage;
- Merits stage.
- Admissibility stage
This part of the review is about whether your complaint meets the requirements needed for the Committee to consider it.
These requirements include:
- Is there enough information/detail in your complaint to make out a breach of a right?
- If someone is acting on your behalf, are they authorised to do that? Or do they have a justified reason for doing it without your written consent?
- Is there an actual person who has been affected by a breach? (The complaint can’t just be about a particular law or policy – there must be an actual person who has been affected)
- Is it a breach of a right that is actually protected in the treaty? (For example, complaints about the ICCPR doesn’t include breaches of rights to property)
- Has the case already been decided by an Australian court? (Treaty bodies can’t be used as an appeal court for Australian legal decisions or to look at whether an Australian court was wrong)
- Did the issue occur before Australia became a member state of the treaty? (The Committee will only look at incidents that occurred after Australia became a member state)
- Has there been a complaint about this issue to another UN body?
- Have all options available in Australia to deal with this issue been used? (Unless the options available are taking an unreasonably long time or the options are clearly not going to make a difference)
- Is the complaint an abuse of the complaint process or not appropriate? (For example, if you have already tried to make the same complaint to the Committee before)
- Merits stage
This part of the review is about the actual facts of your complaint and whether your human right was breached. Merits review can only happen if the first stage of admissibility requirements is passed.
The Committee will make a decision that either:
- Your human right was breached; or
- No human right was breached.
The Committee will usually make their decision based off the written documents given to them by you and the government. They will not normally hear oral (talking) submissions or look for more information beyond what they have been given.