www.un1503petition.com: What IS The United Nations 1503 Procedure

English	French	Italian	Suomi	Sprache	Portuguese	España

WHAT IS THE UNITED NATIONS 1503 PROCEDURE ?

The 1503 procedure is a universal mechanism. It applies in respect of all countries in the world. The 1503 Procedure is named after the resolution of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights which established it. It enables 2 bodies of the UN (the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection on Human Rights and the Commission on Human Rights) to examine complaints which appear to show consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested human rights violations received from individuals or NGOs.

Consistent pattern

In order to show a consistent pattern, the communication should refer to a substantial number of violations against different individuals. In the past, the Commission on Human Rights has decided that as few as 6 or 7 cases of prolonged administrative detention were sufficient to show a consistent pattern.

Gross violations

Gross violations are very serious violations of human rights. They include torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions (killings), arbitrary or summary executions (for example carrying out of the death penalty after an unfair trial), widespread arbitrary imprisonment or lengthy detention without charge or trial and widespread denial of the right to leave a country.

Reliably attested violations

The allegations of violations must be reliably attested, which means backed up by credible evidence. Violations of any of the human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights can be examined under this procedure.

Main features and usefulness of the procedure

This procedure has 2 main features. It examines the human rights situation in specific countries and it is confidential.

1 Examination of the human rights ‘situation’ in a country

This procedure examines the human rights situation in countries. It does not examine individual cases. When a large number of individual cases are received which, taken together, seem to show a pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights, the UN may decide to examine the situation in that country. This procedure is useful if you have evidence of a substantial number of violations against different individuals or evidence of a serious violation of human rights against one person and wish to draw attention to the human rights situation in a particular country, rather than to an individual case, because:

• You think the UN should focus on the underlying problems in the country rather than an individual case.
• The victim of the violation wants the UN to examine the situation in the country rather than the details of what happened to him or her.

This procedure is not useful if you, or the person you represent, has been the victim of a violation of human rights and you want an international mechanism to investigate the case. If you are looking for such a mechanism, the 1503 procedure is not for you.

2 Confidentiality

In its early stages, the 1503 procedure is confidential. It involves communications between the UN and the state under examination which are not made public. Individuals or NGOs which submit complaints are not informed of any action taken regarding their complaint. Usually, the only communication they receive from the UN is a letter acknowledging receipt of their complaint.

The confidential nature of the 1503 Procedure has 2 major consequences:

• Once a collection of individual complaints are examined by the UN under this confidential procedure, the state concerned may argue that those individual complaints should not be examined by other public mechanisms at the same time. Therefore, if you submit a complaint or a number of complaints under this procedure and then try to submit those complaints to other mechanisms (such as a Special Rapporteur) the state concerned may protest and ask those mechanisms not to accept your complaint.

• No details of the UN’s examination of a state under this procedure are made public until the final stages of an examination. The shortest delay within which the final stages can take place is 1 year after the UN first received the individual communication. Therefore, there will be no publicity about any examination the UN may undertake for at least a year.

This procedure is not useful if you plan to send your complaint to a number of different mechanisms or if your primary goal is to get publicity for your complaint, as only a very small number of examinations carried out under this procedure are finally made public. In these circumstances the 1503 procedure may not be the appropriate mechanism for you.