VIII-b. Remedies for Rights Holders
One very important form of accountability mechanism is giving the rights holders themselves (or their representatives) a procedure for complaining and getting some remedy. Human rights in the law rests on the principle ubi jus ibi remedium--where there is a right there must be a remedy. Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that "everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law". Nutrition rights along with all other rights should be articulated in the law, together with a description of the remedies that are available if even a single individual's rights are violated. If you (or your child, or someone else you represent) fail to get what you feel you are entitled to under the law, there should be effective means available to you for pressing your claims. If there are no such remedies, there is no real right.
There are possibilities for bringing complaints at the international level. For example, under the so-called "1503 procedure" (discussed earlier, in Subsection III-g), under certain conditions individuals can bring complaints to the Commission on Human Rights and also to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Under an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, individuals can, under certain conditions, bring complaints to the Human Rights Committee. A campaign has been launched in support of a similar Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. As indicated earlier, in the last column of Table III-2, individuals may bring complaints not only to the HRC and the CERD, but also to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Committee Against Torture (CAT).
The regional human rights bodies also have means under which individuals can file complaints. Details may be found in Scheinin 1995 and in Steiner and Alston 1996.
There are these possibilities for making complaints at the international level, but they have not been used very much. There is broad agreement among human rights advocates that these mechanisms have not been very effective. Even if they had been effective, it would still have to be noted that there has been a curious failure to develop strong remedies in national law. It seems almost as if many human rights advocates have overlooked the fact that the primary locus of implementation of human rights is within nations, not in the international setting. This may have resulted, in part, from an assumption that domestic court systems are adequate to the task, and no special remedies are needed with regard to human rights. The historical evidence contradicts that view.
Remedies may take many different forms, but the common thread is that the individual who feels his or her rights have been violated can do something about it. If, for example, your child is supposed to get a free lunch at school, there should be somewhere you can go to complain if she does not get, and there should be some sort of compensation. The mechanisms should be built into the design of the program. In some cases the remedies can be quite clever. For example, in one country people were supposed to be able to buy a basic loaf of bread at a subsidized price. However, the bakeries through which they were provided often had inadequate supplies, and those who came for the subsidized bread were turned away. Then a new rule was passed. If the subsidized bread was not available, the customer would be entitled to buy any other loaf of bread in the bakery at the price of the subsidized bread. After that, the supplies of the basic bread became plentiful.
The remedies available to rights holders are essential elements of any properly functioning rights system. These remedies assure that the individual will not be treated simply as a passive object. Human rights means recognizing people as active participants in helping to shape the world in which they live, and recognizing that they hav specific powers to make claims on that world.
Continue to VIII-c. Accountability through Public Action.
Subsection VIII-b last updated on April 27, 1999