On 19 May 2021, the outgoing IOI Board of Directors held its annual meeting to take stock of last year’s achievements and to discuss upcoming projects and priorities. This meeting was the last Board meeting in the current composition, as the new Board of Directors under the newly elected IOI President, Mr. Chris Field, will take up its work next week.

We would like to remind members that the International Ombudsman Institute’s 12th General Assembly and World Conference will take place as an online event from 25 - 27 May 2021.

The Guidelines aim at improving co-ordination between the different authorities and services intervening in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation (health and social services, legal assistance, prosecution service and justice).

The 2020 Annual Report of the Commission Against Corruption of Macao was published in the Official Gazette of the Macao Special Administrative Region on 20 May 2021. In 2020, under the pandemic, the CCAC still carried out the actions in the areas of anti-corruption, ombudsman and promotion and education in a pragmatic and orderly way in accordance with its plan.

The Ombudsman de Montréal, Ms Nadine Mailloux, tabled her annual report for the year 2020 to City Council. Presented under the theme "Here for you", the report shows a record number of complaints with 2,150 files handled, including 498 new investigations, 20 of which were initiated by the OdM, compared with 1,966 files handled in 2019.

European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has launched a wide-ranging inquiry into how the Commission handles so-called ‘revolving doors’ cases among its staff. The inquiry is part of a reinforced monitoring of how the EU administration implements the ethics obligations on EU staff who move to the private sector.

The Protector of Citizens of Serbia has published its annual report for the year 2020. The reporting year was marked by the pandemic of COVID-19 infective disease which altered the lives of all citizens in economic, social and existential sense, but also in the sense of the exercise of human rights.

On Thursday 29 April 2021, PHSO started the routine publication of their primary and detailed investigations on their website. You can view their cases on their new publishing platform. They published around 15 of their decisions and will continue to publish cases on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. The number of cases they publish will gradually increase over the next few months.