You can write an application to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights if you believe that your human rights have been violated by French state officials or institutions (or those of any other State which has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its Optional Protocol).
However, there are some conditions which you must take into account before you can submit a complaint:
The Committee cannot investigate complaints which do not relate to the human rights protected by the Covenant.
example The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights cannot investigate an application about your right to a fair trial or about the organization of the government. It can, however, examined applications about housing rights, discrimination, social security rights, etc.
The Committee cannot examine the decisions or actions of private companies, international organizations or private individuals who do not represent French state institutions.
You cannot complain about a violation of another person’s human rights unless you have written consent from that person or a right to represent them. For example, you can complain about a violation of another person’s human rights if you have a power of attorney granted to you allowing you to do that or if you have a legal right to represent that person (such as a parent of a minor or a legal guardian).
exception You can also complain about a violation committed against someone else, without their written consent. However, in such case you will have to prove that it was impossible for you to obtain such consent (for example, the person has died or disappeared).
The Committee cannot investigate a potential violation of your rights if you have not first tried to resolve the problem using all the usual complaint mechanisms that are available under national law. This is known as the exhaustion of domestic remedies.
The French judicial system is organized into two distinct orders: the judicial order, competent for civil and criminal matters, and the administrative order, competent for administrative and public matters. Each of these orders are then divided into 3 categories with the latest, cassation, ruling on the applicable law, but not on the facts of the proceedings. To submit a complaint to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, you must have reached the last possible level of appeals (supreme courts in most cases) and received an answer.
Learn more about the French legal system.
example If you believe that the court of first instance in your case has not respected your right to adequate housing, you should complain about it in your appeal to an appeal court. If the appeal court does not examine your complaint or remedy that violation, you should appeal to the court of cassation of the appropriate order (Cour de cassation for the judicial order and the Conseil d’État for the administrative order). Only after you receive an answer from a cassation court can you complain to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
exception However, you may complain to the Committee if you have previously applied before a national instance and have been waiting for an answer for an unreasonably prolonged length of time.
An application with all the additional documents should be sent to the Committee as soon as possible. The Optional Protocol sets the deadline for sending the application to one year after exhausting domestic remedies.
exception You may submit an application even after a year if you demonstrate that it was not possible for you to submit it beforehand.
The Committee will not examine a complaint if the facts of the complaint occurred before the entry into force of the Optional Protocol.
For France, the Optional Protocol came into force on 18th of March, 2015.
exception However, the Committee will agree to examine a complaint if the facts in question began before the entry into force of the Optional Protocol but had an effect after that date.
If the Committee has already examined the facts of your situation in a different complaint, it will decline to examine it again. The Committee will also refuse to examine your complaint if another international human rights body is examining or has already examined your situation.
example If your complaint about this situation has already been examined by the European Court of Human Rights, your complaint regarding the same violation will not be accepted.