The Catalan Ombudsman, in collaboration with the International Association of Language Commissioners (IALC) has organized an international Symposium on Language Rights and social cohesion in multilingual societies, which will take place next March in Barcelona.

According to Ontario’s “sunshine law”, all meetings of councils, local boards and their committees must be open to the public unless they meet certain narrow requirements. However, there is no punishment for violating the law and municipalities are allowed to hire their own investigators.

The African Ombudsman Summit will be held from 25 to 26 February 2014 in Johannesburg and is being hosted by the African Ombudsman Research Centre (AORC), on behalf of the African Ombudsman and Mediators’ Association (AOMA). The Summit’s theme is “Strengthening Good Governance in Africa through the Role of the Ombudsman”.

Government House Bermuda has announced the appointment of Ms Victoria Pearman as the next Ombudsman. Ms Pearman will succeed Ms Arlene Brock, whose term of office will finish on 31 January 2014.

The Board of Directors decided that the Banking Mohtasib qualified for Voting membership set out in Article 6 (2) of the IOI By-laws and therefore accepted the Banking Mohtasib as Voting member of the IOI.

The Control Yuan (CY) recently finished the English translation of six laws and regulations relevant to the exercise of the control power.

On January 7^th, 2014, Ryszard Czerniawski, Deputy Human Rights Defender, held a meeting with a Chinese delegation from the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau for Letters and Calls.

On December 13 the Ombudsman for Bermuda, Arlene Brock, issued her report into governance generally at the CoH and the Waterfront Development in particular.