8.2 Treaty Bodies and Their Complaint Procedures

The common architecture (state once, apply to all): each core treaty creates a committee of independent experts (nominated and elected by the states parties — serving personally, not as representatives); the reporting cycle (the state report → the constructive dialogue → the concluding observations → the follow-up); the individual communications where the optional protocols/articles allow (the admissibility: the domestic remedies' exhaustion, the victim requirement, the no-duplication and time rules); the inquiries (the confidential country investigations where provided); the general comments (the interpretive doctrine — the committees' jurisprudence-making). The complaints' force: the views' recommendatory character formally — but the persuasive authority and the follow-up pressure real (the exam's honest formulation). The committees (each one line — the syllabus's eight): CERD (the ICERD's committee, 1969): the oldest; the early-warning-and-urgent procedures (the ethnic-crisis tool); the optional individual communications (Art 14 declarations); HRC (the ICCPR's committee): the civil-political guardian; the First Optional Protocol's individual communications — the leading jurisprudence (the views' persuasive force); the inter- state complaints (Art 41); the country missions; CESCR (the ICESCR's committee): the progressive-realization auditor (GC 3's minimum-core doctrine); the OP's newer complaints (2008/2013); CEDAW Committee: the women's-rights guardian; the general recommendations (GR 19's violence-as-discrimination reading); the OP's communications and inquiries; CAT (and the SPT): the torture monitor; the Art 20 inquiries; the OPCAT's Subcommittee on Prevention (the preventive visits)…