What is it?

The Human Rights Council is a group of people (a committee) from around the world who are meant to encourage the support and protection of the human rights around the world.

The Human Rights Council is there to take the complaints that are made about the government in any part of the world. This group is made of people from around the world to make sure that the complaints are treated fairly, taken seriously and dealt with quickly and in a fair way.

 How do they work?

When the Human Rights Council receives a complaint, the first step is to remove the anonymous complaints and the complaints that do not follow the rules and regulations in the Charter of Human Rights.

Here are the rules that need to be followed for the complaint to be accepted:

• The complaint cannot be made for political reasons
• There needs to be good description and explanation of the reason for the complaint (Why and how was there unfairness or injustice?)
• The complaint has to be written in a polite way
• The complaint is made by the victim of the unfairness or injustice or by someone who knows personally what happened to that person
• The complaint is not based on information from the media
• The complaint has not already been made
• All options to fix the unfairness or injustice has been tried and have failed or is taking more time than needed to be fixed

What else do I need to know?

Since the complaint cannot be made without giving your name and information (like your address), the Human Rights Council will keep your information private. Their goal is to help the government and the person making the complaint to fix the issue. The Human Rights Committee (HRC) will be responsible to receive and look over the complaints.

The person making the complaint needs to make sure that:

• The complaints are not made anonymously (without giving your name and information)
• That the problem has been looked into and that no other person has made a complaint on the same problem already

The Council has the right to:

• Make suggestions or rules that need to be followed to help fix the problem
• Ask for more information about the complaint
• Cancel the complaint if they think it does not need any more attention
• Keep an eye on the situation and send someone to the country to do that for them
• Make the complaint public instead of private

Where do I send it?

The first step is to complete a form before your complaint. This can be found on the following website:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/ComplaintProcedure/Pages/HRCComplaintProcedureIndex.aspx

After you have completed this, you may send your complaint:

Fax number:  (41 22) 917 90 11

Email address: CP@ohchr.org

Mailing address:

Complaint Procedure Unit

Human Rights Council Branch

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

United Nations Office at Geneva