International human rights treaties safeguard a variety of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
These include, among others, the rights to life, integrity, fair trial, legal protection and education, and the right to respect for family life, home and correspondence, as well as the freedoms of thought, religion, expression, assembly and movement.
Human rights complaints are investigated by a number of international judicial and investigative bodies, i.e. human rights courts and treaty monitoring bodies of the UN and the CoE. The competence of these bodies is based on the relevant international human rights treaties that Finland has signed and ratified.
If a national authority, in the performance of its functions, violates a natural or legal person's rights protected by an international treaty, that person can make a human rights complaint against the Government.
The condition for the admissibility of such a complaint is, according to the general principles of international law, that all the national legal remedies available have been exhausted. Usually, this means that the national legal proceedings have advanced to the highest possible instance (in Finland, the Supreme Court or the Supreme Administrative Court).
Content administrator Unit for Human Rights Courts and Conventions
Updated 5/26/2010