This year’s IOI training course is soon taking place in Vienna. Five places are still available. Please contact the IOI General Secretariat (ioi@volksanw.gv.at) quickly to register for this high-profile training event. Registrations will be accepted until 23 July 2012.

The Advisory Council was created with the purpose of rendering advisory support to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, holding scientific researches, and also consideration of suggestions concerning the improvement of the state of protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms by means of effective using of potential of civil society institutions

Dear readers, the IOI Newsletter will be on summer break until 31 August 2012 when the General Secretariat will report back to you with the next edition of the Newsletter.

In 2011 the activities of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights had to be carried out under the circumstances of crisis tendencies, where crisis management often generated debates on the interpretation of fundamental rights.

The European NPM Newsletter is a bi-monthly review of information deemed relevant for National Preventive Mechanisms (NPMs) in the Council of Europe region. It is prepared under the aegis of the National Human Rights Structures (NHRS) Unit of the Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs of the Council of Europe

Certain provisions of the Act on Nationalities, which entered into force on 1 January 2012, are contrary to the Fundamental Law and restrict the fundamental rights of nationalities – the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights has requested the Constitutional Court to establish this and to annul the text parts indicated in his petition.

Within a recent meeting the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) agreed on intensified cooperation.

During its mid-term meeting that took place from 7 to 8 May 2012 in Hong Kong, the IOI Board of Directors took decisions on several applications for individual, associate and institutional membership. Welcoming the new members to the IOI family the General Secretariat presents the main facts and figures of each new member ending today with the Ombudsman the Canary Islands.