(e) That the same matter is not being examined under another procedure of international investigation of settlement; (f) That the individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies. __________ * As of 31 July 1990. 5. Under rule 86 of its provisional rules of procedure, the Committee may, prior to the forwarding of its final views on a communication, inform the State party on whether "interim measures" of protection are desirable to avoid irreparable damage to the victim of the alleged violation. A request for interim measures, however, does not imply a determination of the merits of the communication. The Committee has requested such interim measures in a number of cases, e.g. where the carrying out of a death sentence or the expulsion or extradition of a person appeared to be imminent. Under rule 88 (2), the Committee may deal jointly with two or more communications, if deemed appropriate. 6. With respect to the question of burden of proof, the Committee has established that such burden cannot rest alone on the author of a communication, especially if one considers that the author and the State party do not always have equal access to the evidence, and that frequently the State party alone is in possession of the relevant information. It is implicit in article 4 (2) of the Optional Protocol that the State party has the duty to investigate in good faith all allegations of violations of the Covenant made against it and its authorities. 7. It is useful to note that the Committee is neither a court nor a body with a quasi-judicial mandate, like the organ created under a regional human rights instrument, the European Court of Human Rights. Still, the Committee applies the provisions of the Covenant and of the Optional Protocol in a judicial spirit and performs functions similar to those of the European human rights bodies, insofar as the consideration of applications from individuals is concerned. Its decisions on the merits (of a communication) are, in principle, comparable to the reports of the European Commission, non-binding recommendations. The two systems differ, however, in that the Optional Protocol does not provide explicitly for friendly settlement between the parties, and, more important, in that the Committee has no power to hand down binding decisions as does the European Court of Human Rights. States parties to the Optional Protocol endeavour to observe the Committee's views, but in case of non-compliance the Optional Protocol does not provide for an enforcement mechanism or for sanctions. 8. The Secretariat regularly receives enquiries from individuals who intend to submit a communication to the Committee. Such enquiries are not immediately registered as cases. In fact, the number of authors who eventually submit their cases for consideration by the Committee under the Optional Protocol is relatively low, partly because the authors discover that their cases do not satisfy certain basic criteria of admissibility, such as the required exhaustion of domestic remedies, and partly because they realize that a reservation or a declaration by the State party concerned may operate to preclude the Committee's competence to consider the case. The observations notwithstanding, the number of communications placed before the Committee each year is increasing steadily, and the Committee's work is becoming better known to lawyers, research workers and the general public. If the series of Selected Decisions contribute to making the work of the Committee more generally known, it will have served a useful purpose. 9. The first step towards a wider dissemination of the Committee's work was the decision taken during the seventh session to publish its views: that publication was desirable in the interest of the most effective exercise of the Committee's functions under the Protocol, and publication in full was preferable to the publication of brief 8