The Human Rights Committee can:
Examine your complaint about a possible human rights violation
It can do this in the states which have signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol. Estonia is included among those states.
If your complaint is accepted, the Committee can determine whether Estonian 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 higher courts in Estonia. Because of this and also because its decisions are not binding, it 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 Estonian laws