disrepute. The State hasn’t shown the detrimental effect of this statement on the judiciary in particular and the administration of justice as a whole. In its submission to the Commission, the Complainants indicated that “… [t]he judges who issued the judgment sat as the country’s constitutional court, constituted as usual by a bench of five. The country only has six Supreme Court judges. The most senior judge, Justice Sandura, was omitted from the Court’s line-up, but he cannot now constitute a new bench, either by sitting alone or by sitting with acting judges of appeal”. In the opinion of the Commission, the Complainants were simply stating a fact - a fact to demonstrate that in their view, it had approached the highest judicial body in the country. The use of the word“omitted” cannot in the Commission’s view be seen as disparaging or insulting to the judiciary. There is no evidence to show that it was used in bad faith or calculated to poison the mind of the public against the judiciary. 97. With regards the Respondent State’s claim that the Complainants published an article with disparaging language in their newspaper edition of 12 September 2003, the African Commission cannot make a pronouncement on the same as the purported statement does not form part of the Complaint submitted to the Commission. Article 56.3 of the Charter requires that communications submitted to the African Commission are not written in disparaging or insulting language…. Communications within the meaning of Articles 55 and 56, refer to the complaints submitted by petitioners. These complaints invariably include other documentations submitted by the petitioner to support their case, such as annexes. Documents supplied by third parties or the Respondent cannot and should not form part of the complaint. In the present communication, neither the complaint itself nor the annexes thereto made reference to the statement purportedly published by the Complainant in its newspaper edition of 12 September 2003. For the above reasons, the Commission declines to uphold the Respondent State’s argument that the communication is written in disparaging and insulting language. 98. With regards the exhaustion of local remedies, [the] Complainants submit that domestic remedies are ineffective, that the Respondent State has been given the opportunity to remedy the grievance submitted before the Commission but the State, through its courts, has proved unable to do so. The Respondent State on its part argues that the matter is still before the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, and has been pending before the Court simply because of the Complainants’“defiance of the law”. 99. It is a well established rule of customary international law that before international proceedings are instituted, the various remedies provided by the State should have been exhausted. The principle of the exhaustion of local remedies is contained inArticle 56.5 of the African Charter and provides that communications relating to human and peoples’ rights referred to inArticle 55 received by the African Commission shall be considered if they “are sent after the exhaustion of local remedies, if any, unless it is obvious that this procedure is unduly prolonged”. 100. International mechanisms are not substitutes for domestic implementation of human rights, but should be seen as tools to assist the domestic authorities to develop a sufficient protection of human rights in their territories. If a victim of a human rights violation wants to bring an individual case before an international body, he or she must first have tried to obtain a remedy from the national authorities. It must be shown that the State was given an opportunity to remedy the case itself before resorting to an international body. This reflects the fact that States are not considered to have violated their human rights obligations if they provide genuine and effective remedies for the victims of human rights violations. 101. The international bodies do recognise however, that in many countries, remedies may be nonexistent or illusory. They have therefore developed rules about the characteristics which remedies should have, the way in which the remedies have to be exhausted and special circumstances where it might not be necessary to exhaust them. The African Commission has held that for the domestic remedies referred to in Article 56.5 of the Charter to be exhausted they must be available, effectiveand sufficient. If the domestic remedies do not meet these criteria, a victim may not have to exhaust them before complaining to an international body. However, the Complainant needs to be able to show that the remedies do not fulfil these criteria in practice, not merely in the opinion of the victim or that of his or her legal representative.