• Is the committee in question required to review the facts and evidence in a case already decided by national courts? The committees are competent to consider possible violations of the rights guaranteed by the treaties concerned, but not to act as an appellate instance with respect to national courts and tribunals. They cannot, in principle, examine the determination of the administrative, civil or criminal liability of individuals, nor can they review the question of innocence or guilt. • Is the complaint sufficiently substantiated? If the relevant committee considers, in the light of the information before it, that the complainant has not sufficiently presented / described the facts and arguments, it may reject the case as insufficiently substantiated and thus inadmissible. • Does the complaint relate to events that occurred after the entry into force of the complaint mechanism for the State party concerned? As a rule, a committee does not examine complaints if the facts occurred before this date, as the complaint would be regarded as inadmissible ratione temporis. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, for instance if the effects of the event in question result in a continuous violation of the treaty. • Has the same matter been submitted to another international body? If it has been submitted to another treaty body or to a regional mechanism, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights or the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the committees cannot examine the complaint. This rule aims to prevent unnecessary duplication at the international level. If the matter has been submitted to another body, the complainant should indicate this in the original complaint, specifying the body to which it was submitted. • Have all domestic remedies been exhausted? As indicated before, a cardinal principle governing the admissibility of a complaint is that the complainant must first have exhausted all relevant remedies that are available in the State party before bringing a claim to a committee. This usually includes pursuing the claim through the local court system, unless there is sufficient evidence that proceedings at the national level have been unreasonably prolonged or would plainly be ineffective. Detailed reasons must be provided as to why the complainant considers that the general rule should not apply. Mere doubts about the effectiveness of a relevant remedy do 8