The Human Rights Committee can:

Examine your complaint about a possible human rights violation

It can do this in the states which have ratified or succeeded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol. Slovakia is included among those states.

If your complaint is accepted, the Committee can determine whether Slovakian state authorities have violated your human rights. If the Committee concludes that there has been a violation of your rights, it can recommend that the State should provide you with a remedy for that violation. The State is not legally obliged to comply with these recommendations. However, they will usually be observed, because the state will have to report back to the Committee on how the remedy has been implemented. 

The Human Rights Committee cannot:

The Committee can only carry out those tasks, which it is allowed to do under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol. As an international body it has very specific functions and it does not have the same power as the Slovakian higher courts, but it differs from the European Court of Human Rights, too. Its decisions are not legally binding, although they have serious political weight and the states usually take these findings into account. The Committees overseeing a the international human rights treaties are sometimes called “quasi-judicial” bodies. The Committee cannot:

  • require the state to give you a specific amount of money as compensation
  • examine complaints about the actions of private companies and persons
  • revoke or change the decisions of courts or state institutions
  • re-examine the evidence of national court cases
  • punish state officials or private individuals
  • annul or amend Slovakian laws

Resources

Last updated 11/03/2024