Disability services provider Autism Plus and the Department of Health and Human Services put clients at risk by failing to move a group home resident who was accused of sexually assaulting vulnerable housemates. Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass said the events raised serious concerns about the suitability of Autism Plus to provide programs and care for DHHS clients.

IOI President Peter Tyndall, General Secretary Günther Kräuter and the Vice-President of the European region of the IOI, Ms. Catherine De Bruecker attended the 20th anniversary of the People's Advocate Institution of Romania as well as the International Human Rights Conference hosted by the EOI in Bucharest from September 21-22.

The Ombudsperson for Children of the Republic of Croatia has prepared a questionnaire on the role of psychology in the field of human rights and social justice in order to explore views of individual independent organizations for human rights and Ombudspersons' offices on the matter. IOI members are kindly requested to support this project by filling out the form and sending it back by 8 October 2017.

“Independent, impartial and outreaching”; with these three terms Reinier van Zutphen, National Ombudsman of the Netherlands defined the central task of an ombudsman institute. He did so during a press conference at the office of the Polish ombudsman Mr Adam Bodnar. Mr Van Zutphen is also board member of the European Chapter of the de International Ombudsman Institute (IOI). The Dutch National Ombudsman visited his colleague for a two day meeting sharing best practices and experiences.

The Judiciary Committee supported, with ten yes votes and two abstentions, that the National Assembly put the report on the activities of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights in 2016 on the agenda of its plenary meeting.

En nombre del Instituto Internacional del Ombudsman (IIO), el Sr. Peter Tyndall (Presidente del IIO) y el Sr. Günther Kräuter (Secretario General del IIO) enviaron una note de solidaridad al Presidente de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos de México, el Sr. Luis Raúl González Pérez, ante la catástrofe del devastador terremoto que sufrió México el día martes de esta semana.

La Defensora de Niñas, Niños y Adolescentes de Santa Fe, Analía Colombo, recibió este martes en Rosario al Defensor del Pueblo de Colombia, Carlos Alfonso Negret Mosquera, con quién dialogó acerca de la experiencia de mediación como solución al conflicto que atraviesa ese país.

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) signed a co-operation agreement on 19 September 2017, on the margins of the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw.