Submissions

Everything that is said below applies to ordinary submissions. If your case is urgent, see URGENT CASES.

Many of the human rights mechanisms now offer guidance on how to make a submission, which can be obtained by writing to the relevant person

COMMITTEES

The very first thing to check before making a submission is that the government has signed up to the relevant Covenant or Convention and that it has come into force domestically (see table on each Committee).

Secondly, read the Covenant or Convention and make sure that the issue(s) about which you want to make a submission are relevant to that particular Committee.

Thirdly, check the timetable. You need to work out when is the latest time for sending in your own submission and work backwards from that date. See the tables at the back of this guide for deadlines, but you may also need to check with the Secretary of the Committee.

Although UN Committees will accept submissions sent to them at any time, they will not actually be considered until such time as the government’s next periodic report is due to be considered. It makes sense to wait until the government’s report is available, and to obtain it and read it before making your own submission, so that you can counter any inaccuracies it may contain and highlight any omissions.

In the UK, the government does not usually publicise the fact that a periodic report is available. You will need to keep an eye on the date (see NEXT UK REPORT section in the table about the relevant Committee), and around about the time when you think it is likely to be ready, start telephoning the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Human Rights Unit (see Appendix D) to find out whether it is available. They will send you a free copy. If the report is not ready when you contact them, they should put you on the mailing list but if you have not heard from them by the time they told you the report would be ready, it is worth calling them again.

In Ireland, you need to adopt the same approach in relation to the Department of Foreign Affairs (see Appendix D). As you will notice from the NEXT IRELAND REPORT section in the tables on the Committees, Ireland is behind with some of its reports. This is partly because Ireland only ratified some of the treaties relatively recently and it takes time to produce a first-ever report to a Committee (see below). Also, the Committees themselves are behind schedule in examining reports.

Once the report is available, telephone the Secretary of the relevant Committee (see table for telephone number) and check when the report is likely to be considered. You may be told the date of the session or you may receive the reply that no date has been set but it will not be before such-and-such a date. Either way, you will need to check with the Secretary two or three times in order to be certain of the date. Even when a report has been allocated to a particular session, the date may slip, and sometimes reports are considered rather earlier than expected if other states have failed to submit reports on time.

Your own submission need not necessarily refer to the content of the government’s report, unless you wish to correct or augment it in some way. So long as your submission is relevant to the government’s implementation of the particular Covenant or Convention under consideration by the Committee, you are free to make the points you wish, regardless of anything the government has or has not said.

However, you need to be aware of the pattern of periodic reporting. The first report a government ever makes to the Committee once the Covenant or Convention has come into force domestically will be very comprehensive, and the Committee’s examination of the report will also be thorough. Second and subsequent reports will tend to concentrate on those areas the Committee highlighted in its questions at the previous hearing, and new areas covered in later reports or successfully raised by NGOs. If the government has submitted a number of reports over the years (this is more likely to be true for the UK than for Ireland, which tended to ratify more recently), it is worth obtaining the earlier reports and the minutes of the Committee hearings from the UN Office library in London - see Appendix B - or from the Documentation Unit of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva - see tables for the address, or from their website at http://www.unhchr.ch – see site map at page 59. This will enable you to see whether the government has consistently defaulted on an issue that you want to raise, or has ignored recommendations made previously by the Committee. The Committee’s criticism tends to be stronger in such circumstances.

Submissions should be sent to the Secretary to the Committee. Ideally, you should send multiple copies of your submission, one for each member of the Committee, one for the Secretary, and one for the representative of the Secretary-General of the UN, who attends the session. If you cannot afford to do this, the Secretary will make copies, but may only get round to doing so rather late in the day, which means members will have less time to read it. Also, if you intend to go and lobby at the session, the Secretary will remember you as having helpfully saved him or her a lot of photocopying.

Submissions should be sent two months before the government’s report is due to be discussed. If you send them in late, you run the risk that they will not be distributed to Committee members. Four of the Committees – the Human Rights Committee and the Committees on women, children and economic, social and cultural rights – allow NGOs to attend the pre-sessional meetings at which they draw up the list of questions to be put to the government when its report is considered. See the tables at the end of this guide for details. If you want to influence the questions put to the government, you must get your submission, including your own list of questions, to the Secretary two months before the pre-sessional meeting.

Remember that not all the members speak English. In theory, the UN will translate submissions, although recent experience suggests that this is beyond their present resources. It is therefore a good idea to provide copies in French and/or Spanish if you can. Providing your own translations also means that you can be sure the submission has been translated accurately. If you are not able to provide translations, try to use English clearly and simply, especially in the summary at the beginning, so that those for whom English is not their first language can grasp the gist of it.

Depending on the Secretary in question, you may or may not receive an acknowledgement of your submission. To be on the safe side, telephone the Secretary about three weeks after sending off the submission to make sure it has been received. If it has still not been received within a month of the hearing, send it in again and check that it has arrived.

There are five golden rules about making submissions:
1. keep it short. Submissions that are more than 30 pages long, including any additional material, are unlikely to be read in full (most UN reports are now confined to a maximum of 30 pages). Ideally, submissions should be much shorter than that - 10 to 12 pages at most.

2. make sure you explain how your submission relates to the Convention. Read through the Covenant or Convention and work out which articles are relevant to the issues you want to raise. When you first mention the issue in your submission, use a phrase like:
“This practice violates Article X of the Convention”
or
“The use of unnecessary force during deportations is a
breach of Article Y”.
Committees tend to go through the Covenant or Convention in order, so if possible make your submission in the same order, and put the article number in the heading. Some issues involve more than one article, so use your judgement as to which is the main article, and then mention in the text that other articles are also relevant.
3. be accurate. Check your facts, get them right, and do not exaggerate. Be as specific as you can - it is better to say:

“X% of all people stopped by the police in London in 2001
were males under the age of 25 from the Afro-Caribbean community”
than
“It is well known that young black men are more likely than
anyone else to be stopped by the police in London.”
If members feel they cannot rely on your material, they will not take any notice of it.

4. do not expect Committee members to have prior knowledge about your country, the issue you are highlighting, or the background to it. You will need to spell out for them things that you might take for granted. If you use acronyms or words that they may not recognise, explain what you mean - for example, “the RUC (the Northern Ireland police force)” or “several Gardaí (Irish police officers) were involved in the incident”.
5. put a short executive summary at the beginning of the submission, and cross-reference it to the main body of the text. Members will read this if they read nothing else, so make sure it is very clear and that it covers all your main points, as briefly as possible.

Always start your submission by explaining who you are. This is your opportunity to establish your credentials and to make sure the members take your submission seriously. If you are making a submission on behalf of an organisation, say something like:
“ [Name of organisation] is an independent non-governmental organisation set up in [year] in order to [set out main aims of organisation]. We have X years’ experience of [e.g. researching and monitoring the issues you want to raise].”

Next, you should summarise very succinctly, ideally in one paragraph, what your submission is about, before going into detail.

Although in theory the Committee will be examining the government’s record over the few years since the last periodic report, in practice Committee members are more concerned with the present situation. It is not worth complaining about matters which have since been put right, although it is perfectly acceptable to mention long-standing problems which have never been addressed.

It is very important to substantiate your case as far as possible. If your claims can be verified from an official source, quote it. If your concerns are shared by organisations that are better known than your own, especially another NGO with consultative status, quote them. If there is a newspaper cutting that neatly sums up the facts of a case, or the reaction of the community, it can be worth including it if space permits. Photographs, official documents such as death certificates, medical reports and so on, should also be considered. If you are short of space, you can summarise the evidence but say that you have copies of the full documents and can supply them if required. Try to read your submission with a critical eye: if you think someone sceptical about you would query something you have said, or would consider something you have said to be contentious, make it clear that your point is based on factual evidence, not unsubstantiated rumour or opinion. If you agree with something that the government has said in its report, or can praise something the government has done (even though you may consider they have not done enough), it does no harm to say so. The more responsible, balanced, factual and accurate your submission is, the better.

If you mention named individuals in your submission, mention that you are doing so with their permission, as Committee members are often concerned about confidentiality, especially if you are dealing with a sensitive issue such as rape or sexual assault/abuse. The only exception to this is when you are referring to well-known cases that have received a lot of publicity.

At the end of your submission, include a list of questions that you would like the Committee to put to the government. There is no guarantee that they will in fact ask your questions, but you may well prompt them to do so, especially if you keep your questions short, specific and precise.

Make your submission look as smart as possible. Even if you cannot afford to spend very much on it, make sure that it is neatly typed, and that the spelling is correct. If you have a word processor, or can get access to one, make good use of its ability to create headings of different sizes, and use boxes and bullet points. Give your submission a cover, page numbers and an index. Make it as easy to read and to follow as possible.

If you can, use an eye-catching logo or picture on the cover. Use colour if you can. If you are restricted to a stapled document made up of photocopied pages, consider having a cover which is on coloured paper rather than white. If the report falls into distinct sections, you could use different colours to mark them out. However, stick to pale colours that will photocopy easily. If members can easily recognise your report as “the one with the yellow cover” or “the one with the Celtic designs” or whatever, there is a better chance that they will remember its contents.

Your submission is your property, and you can do what you like with it. You can put out a press release saying that you have made the submission, and you can send copies to anyone you think should see it. You should also consider whether there are other parts of the UN human rights machinery to whom you should send your submission, for example, a relevant Special Rapporteur.

You should also consider sending the government a copy of your submission. If you do so, their delegation will come armed to answer the points you have raised, and you may feel that this is a disadvantage. However, the UN is not an adversarial arena. Indeed, the exchanges between committees and governments are usually described, not always accurately, as dialogues. The advantage of letting the government see your submission in advance lies in the possibility that they will look at the issues you raise afresh. They may even take steps to remedy your complaint before the committee meets, or, if not, they may give the committee an assurance that they will do so. If you decide to send your submission to the government, mention that you have done so in the submission itself and then refer to any response (or lack of one) you have had from the government when you are lobbying at the UN.

If you decide to attend the session in Geneva in order to lobby the Committee in person, your submission will be your starting point and the means of introducing yourself to members of the Committee. If you are not able to attend, then all you can do is hope that the Committee will have taken note of your submission and will ask the government questions based on it and make findings or recommendations accordingly.

If you are able to be present, you will be able to take notes of the Committee’s comments and recommendations. The written version is not usually available until a day or so afterwards. The easiest way to obtain a copy is from the website at http://www.unhchr.ch – see site map at page 59 – although there is often a time lag before documents are posted on the web. Otherwise, you can obtain a copy by asking a friendly NGO based in Geneva to fax it to you, or by telephoning the Secretary and asking them to do so. The former is preferable to the latter, because if the session is continuing the Secretary will be busy with another country’s report and may not be able to give your request any priority. Other domestic NGOs may have better access to the written version than you, in which case they may be able to help – see Appendix A.

The UN also produces daily press releases of committee proceedings, usually reporting the morning and afternoon meetings separately. These are usually available on the following day, although sometimes the morning reports are available by the end of the same day. These press releases summarise what has been said during the session. They are selective, so may not include the issue that is of greatest concern to you, and are not always completely accurate because they are produced so quickly, but it is always worth getting hold of them. It is also possible to obtain tape-recordings of meetings. You can request the original language or the English translation. There is a charge for each cassette and it is essential to order them in advance from the Secretary to the Committee.

See MAKING A COMPLAINT UNDER THE OPTIONAL PROTOCOLS for how to make an individual complaint to the Human Rights Committee or the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Ireland only).

SPECIAL RAPPORTEURS

Much of what is said above about making submissions to Committees also applies to making submissions to Special Rapporteurs, whether their mandate is thematic/investigative or reporting.

The thematic/investigative Rapporteurs all make their reports to the Commission, which meets in the early part of each year. The actual date varies, so you will need to check with the assistant to the particular Rapporteur (see table for telephone number) when the Rapporteur will be submitting his or her report. You should send in your submission at least two months before that in order to give the Rapporteur as much time as possible to consider it.

If you want the Rapporteur to look into a particular complaint, you can send it in at any time, but be aware that towards the end of the year, while the Rapporteur may take the matter up, it is unlikely to appear in that year’s report to the Commission.

You will probably not receive an acknowledgement, and you should check with the assistant to ensure that it has been received.

In the case of individual complaints, if the Rapporteur is satisfied that it is a genuine case falling within the mandate, s/he will submit it to the government for their comments. Governments are often slow to respond. If, as will almost certainly be the case, you have heard nothing six months after sending in your submission, telephone the assistant to enquire whether the case has been transmitted to the government, and whether any reply has been received. This will have a number of potential effects;
• it may galvanise the Rapporteur to transmit your submission to the government, if this has not already happened;
• it may cause the Rapporteur to chase up the government, if they have not replied;
• it will let the assistant know that you are interested in hearing about progress, and that you wish to see the government’s reply and to comment on it.

However, do not rely on the assistant to keep you informed - s/he will probably be far too busy. You will need to strike a balance between maintaining a visible interest in the progress of your complaint and harassing an already-harassed assistant. A monthly telephone call or e-mail may be acceptable; more frequent calls are very unlikely to be appreciated. At the opposite extreme, if you take no interest in what is happening, you will probably never hear of your case again, unless it happens to be mentioned in the report to the Commission.

Do not expect to be told when the report to the Commission is ready. You will not be able to obtain a copy until after it has been officially submitted to the Commission. In theory, but not always in practice, reports are available on the website at http://www.unhchr.ch – see site map at page 59 – a few days before it is due to be presented. Paper copies of reports are usually available at the UN on the morning of the day when they are to be discussed, and if you attend the Commission (or know someone else who is going), you can obtain a copy then. Copies will also be available from the documentation desk at the UN, which may have the report in advance of the actual day on which it is to be discussed. Otherwise, you will have to obtain one by post from the Office of the High Commissioner Human Rights (see table on the Commission for address).

If you are sending your submission to a Special Rapporteur with a reporting mandate, the most that you can hope for is that mention will be made of the issues it raises in his or her report to the Commission or Sub-Commission. While it may be wise to check that it has been received, there is no point in chasing progress, as in effect you are merely supplying it for information.

For Special Rapporteurs with a thematic/investigative mandate, the very fact that they have questioned the government about your submission is useful. For both types of Rapporteur, a mention in their reports is especially useful, as you can quote any criticism they may make in any other context, including legal proceedings.

Those thematic/investigative Rapporteurs who are most likely to receive complaints about individuals – that is, those who cover torture, extra-judicial executions, violence against women and human rights defenders – have issued a model questionnaire or guidelines for use by people sending in complaints, or “communications” as the UN calls them. These can be obtained from the relevant assistant or from the UN website at http://www.unhchr.ch – see site map at page 59. It is not vital to use the actual questionnaire so long as you provide all the information it seeks.

Special Rapporteurs vary in their degree of proactivity, but the most proactive will intervene vigorously in individual cases. If your case is urgent, see URGENT CASES.

Special Rapporteurs will not normally investigate issues that are the subject of a complaint under the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Ireland only) – see USING THE OPTIONAL PROTOCOLS – or the 1503 procedure – see USING THE 1503 PRODECURE.

WORKING GROUPS

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances also issue guidelines and have a questionnaire for complainants to complete - contact the Secretary (see relevant table) for details, or look at the website.

The Working Group on Communications also requires a particular type of submission - see USING THE 1503 PROCEDURE.

Otherwise, what has been said about making submissions to Committees and Special Rapporteurs will be relevant. Remember to check whether the Working Group is reporting to the Commission or the Sub-Commission, and time your submission accordingly, liaising with the Secretary to find out when the Working Group will be writing its report and sending in your submission at least two months beforehand.

The Working Group on Minorities is particularly NGO-friendly and encourages submissions and participation from those with expert knowledge, whether the NGO has consultative status at the UN or not.