Although a complaint to the committee, also referred to as a communication or petition, does not necessarily have to be in a specific form, it is recommended to use the sample complaint and recommendation forms attached below. The complaint must be submitted in writing, legibly written, preferably in hard copy, and signed. Complaints sent by e-mail should be scanned and attached to an e-mail addressed to the OHCHR Petitions Team (see contact information at the end of this Statement of Facts). Only communications submitted in one of the official languages of the United Nations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) are accepted for consideration. The complaint must contain basic information about the applicant - surname, nationality, date of birth, postal and e-mail addresses of the applicant - and it must specifically indicate the State party against which it is directed.
Any subsequent changes to the address or other contact information should be notified as soon as possible.
It is very important to state in chronological order all the facts on which the complaint is based. The statement of facts should be as complete as possible and contain all relevant information. The applicant must indicate why he or she believes that the facts presented indicate a violation of the relevant contract. It is particularly recommended that applicants indicate the rights enshrined in the contract that were allegedly violated. It is also recommended to indicate the types of remedies that the complainant would like to receive from the State party if the committee concludes that the facts presented to it indicate a violation.
The applicant should also indicate in detail the measures that he has already taken to exhaust available remedies in the State party against which the complaint is directed, i.e. the measures that have been taken in the local courts and authorities of the State party. The requirement to exhaust domestic remedies means that complaints must first be brought to the attention of the relevant national authorities, up to the highest available instance. If some of these remedies have not yet been decided on or have not yet been exhausted, this should also be indicated, as well as the relevant reasons. For further explanations, see below.
Applicants should provide copies of all documents9 relevant to their complaints and arguments, especially administrative or judicial decisions taken by national authorities on their complaints. Only copies of the documents should be submitted, not the originals. If these documents do not exist in any of the official languages of the United Nations, a full or short translation must be provided. The documents should be arranged in chronological order, they should be numbered accordingly and accompanied by a brief description of their contents. The complaint should not exceed 50 pages (excluding appendices). If it exceeds 20 pages, it should also include a short summary of up to 5 pages in size outlining its main elements.
If the complaint does not contain significant information to be processed according to these procedures, or if the statement of facts is unclear, the United Nations Secretariat (OHCHR) will request the applicant to provide additional information or to resubmit the complaint. Applicants should be attentive in their correspondence with the Secretariat, and the requested information should be sent as soon as possible. If the information has not been provided within a year from the date of the relevant request, the case is terminated.
The final decisions taken by the Committees are made public. Therefore, if the applicants do not want their names to appear in the final decisions, they should indicate this as early as possible. Given the high level of publicity that is usually characteristic of the decisions taken (including posting them on the Internet, which makes it almost impossible to correct and/or exclude information), the United Nations may not be able to satisfy requests for anonymity submitted after the publication of the final decisions.