Last week, Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé released his latest Ombudsman’s message, stressing that his office continues to help Ontarians during the present state of emergency, and has responded to hundreds of public complaints related to the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) brings unprecedented challenges for our society, both nationally and globally. Public authorities must make significant decisions that affect public health, civil liberties and people’s prosperity. The public’s right to access information about such decisions is vital.

Federal Ombudsman Syed Tahir Shahbaz chaired a meeting to direct investigating officers and senior officers to facilitate complainants by observing all safety measures.

The Anit-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) has analysed a total of 52,118 cases of civil complaints for two months after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Korea, and pushed for measures to mitigate people’s inconvenience in cooperation with relevant ministries and agencies.

The Human Rights Ombudsman of the Republic of Slovenia has created a special page on its website, exclusively dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 5 March 2020, Ms Marjeta Cotman and Dr Jože Ruparčič were elected by the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia to the position of Deputy Ombudsmen of the Republic of Slovenia.

At this very serious moment in our collective life, many citizens are wondering about the meaning and scope of the State of Emergency, decreed on the 18 March 2020 by His Excellency the President of the Republic. The questions, associated with natural feelings of unease and apprehension, are in themselves more than justified. Never before, during the almost forty-four years of the Constitution of the Republic, had the need been felt to resort to this exceptional instrument of ordering social relations. The need has now arisen.

The purpose of immigration detention is to ensure that people with no right to remain in the Netherlands are available for deportation. How this should be done has been a matter of debate for some years. In 2015 the Minister of Justice put forward draft legislation proposing a new differentiated regime and in May 2017 the Rotterdam detention centre introduced this new regime in anticipation of the legislation. This prompted the National Ombudsman to investigate the way the new regime works in practice.

The Seimas Ombudsman Augustinas Normantas has begun the monitoring of social care homes through social media. Having launched a private Facebook group named "A Quarantine in social care institutions," the Human Rights Division of the Seimas Ombudsmen's Office started monitoring of social care institutions by providing the assistance to caregivers and collecting information on challenges with which the institutions face.