The first question the Committee on the Rights of the Child has to answer when it receives communications submitted under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)... Show moreThe first question the Committee on the Rights of the Child has to answer when it receives communications submitted under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on a communications procedure (CRC-OP3) is: is the communication admissible? Experiences show that the majority of the cases dealt with by the Committee so far is inadmissible. This means that a lot of time and energy invested in the submission of the communication did not produce the intended result: a decision of the Committee on the complaint that one or more rights in the CRC were violated. This report presents an annotated overview of the decisions of the Committee in which it declared the communication inadmissible. It also provides a number of overarching comments and reflections, in order to inform individuals or (legal) professionals who consider to submit a communication to the Committee, about the different admissibility criteria of CRC-OP3 and the way the Committee applies and interpreters these criteria. The report indicates that many cases are declared inadmissible because they are ill-founded or not sufficiently substantiated. This gives reason for future authors of submissions to make sure that their claim that a right of the CRC was violated is based on the correct legal provisions and that sufficient facts are presented to substantiate the claim. In some cases, adults, usually one of the parents, claim a violation of their rights under the CRC. These claims are inadmissible because they are considered incompatible with the provisions of the CRC, which protect the rights of children and not of adults. Some issues are given separate attention such as the request of States Parties to deal with the admissibility separately from the merits, the intervention of third parties and the working methods of the Committee. The report is based on research until April 2020. Show less
