INTRODUCTION 1. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Optional Protocol thereto were adopted by the General Assembly on 16 December 1966 and entered into force on 23 March 1976. (f) That the individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies. 5. Under rule 92 (old rule 86) of its rules of procedure, the Committee may, prior to the forwarding of its final Views on a communication, inform the State party of whether “interim measures” of protection are desirable to avoid irreparable damage to the victim of the alleged violation. The request for interim measures, however, does not imply the determination of the merits of the communication. The Committee has requested such interim measures in numerous cases, for example where the carrying out of a death sentence or the expulsion or extradition of a person appeared to be imminent. Pursuant to rule 94 (2), the Committee may deal jointly with two or more communications, if deemed appropriate. 2. In accordance with article 28 of the Covenant, the States parties established the Human Rights Committee on 20 September 1976. 3. Under the Optional Protocol, individuals who claim that any of their rights set forth in the Covenant have been violated and who have exhausted all available domestic remedies may submit a written communication to the Human Rights Committee for consideration. No communication can be received by the Committee if it concerns a State party to the Covenant that is not also a party to the Optional Protocol. As of 31 December 2007, 110 of the 156 States that had acceded to or ratified the Covenant had accepted the competence of the Committee to receive and consider individual complaints by ratifying or acceding to the Optional Protocol. 6. With respect to the question of burden of proof, the Committee has established that such burden cannot rest on the author of a communication alone, especially since the author and the State party do not always have equal access to the evidence and the State party frequently has sole possession of the relevant information. It is implicit in article 4 (2) of the Optional Protocol that the State party has a duty to investigate in good faith all allegations of violations of the Covenant made against it and its authorities. 4. Under the terms of the Optional Protocol, the Committee may consider a communication only if certain conditions of admissibility are satisfied. These conditions are set out in articles 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the Optional Protocol and restated in rule 96 of the Committee’s rules of procedure (CCPR/C/3/Rev.9), pursuant to which the Committee shall ascertain: 7. The Committee started work under the Optional Protocol at its second session in 1977. From then until its ninety-first session in October 2007, 1745 communications relating to alleged violations by 82 States parties were placed before it for consideration. By the end of December 2007, the status of these communications was as follows: (a) That the communication is not anonymous and that it emanates from an individual, or individuals, subject to the jurisdiction of a State party to the Protocol; (b) That the individual claims, in a manner sufficiently substantiated, to be a victim of a violation by that State party of any of the rights set forth in the Covenant. Normally, the communication should be submitted by the individual himself or by his representative; a communication submitted on behalf of an alleged victim may, however, be accepted when it appears that he is unable to submit the communication himself; (a) Concluded by the adoption of Views under article 5 (4) of the Optional Protocol: 605 (b) Declared inadmissible: 483 (c) Discontinued or withdrawn: 242 (d) Declared concluded: 16 (e) (c) That the communication is not an abuse of the right to submit a communication under the Protocol; admissible but not yet Pending at pre-admissibility stage: 399 8. Since 1976, the Committee has received many more than the 1745 registered communications mentioned above. The secretariat regularly receives inquiries from individuals who intend to submit a communication to the Committee. Such inquiries are not immediately registered as cases. In fact, the number of authors who eventually submit cases for consideration by the Committee under the Optional Protocol is relatively small, (d) That the communication is not incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant; (e) That the same matter is not being examined under another procedure of international investigation or settlement; 1