Human Rights and Disability A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions 4.8. INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP COMMUNICATIONS UNDER THE OPTIONAL PROTOCOL The individual (or group) communications procedure under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities permits individuals and/or groups of individuals in a State that has ratified the Optional Protocol to complain to the Committee that a State has breached one of its obligations under the Convention. The complaint is known as a ‘communication’.149 Strict admissibility criteria apply to such communications. A communication is deemed inadmissible if: • It is anonymous • It is an abuse of or incompatible with the provisions of the Convention • The same complaint has already been examined by the Committee • The same complaint has been or is being examined under another international investigations procedure • All available domestic remedies have not yet been exhausted • It is ill-founded or not sufficiently substantiated • The facts occurred and terminated prior to entry into force of the Protocol for the State in question.150 If the communication is deemed admissible, the Committee will examine the complaint, establish its views and recommendations on the communication and send them to the State in question. Those views and recommendations appear in the Committee’s public report to the UN General Assembly. It is typically a paper-based exercise, with neither the complainant nor the State party required to appear before the Committee. However, there is nothing to preclude a hearing before the Committee. NHRIs have a crucial role to play in helping to ensure the individual communications procedure is used appropriately and effectively; for example, by producing information and advice on the admissibility criteria for the general public and by assisting individuals or groups to prepare complaints and compile evidence. The Committee has also indicated that it would welcome the support of NHRIs in considering communications and in developing its jurisprudence, though it has yet to issue formal Guidelines on this matter. A statistical survey on individual complaints is available on the OHCHR website.151 66 149 See ‘Fact Sheet on the Procedure for Submitting Communications to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities under the Optional Protocol to the Convention’, CRPD/C/5/2/Rev.1, 2012. 150 Ibid. 151 Accessed at: www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/StatisticalSurvey.xls.