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IOI Secretary General and ODIHR Director
The IOI Secretary General, Günther Kräuter, attended the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the OSCE in Warsaw on 19 September to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Following an IOI-Board Decision from April 2017, the Secretary General used his visit to the HDIM to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The newly appointed ODIHR Director, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, stressed that national human rights institutions (NHRIs), including Ombudsman institutions, are key partners for ODIHR.
Secretary General Kräuter is looking forward to a further deepening of the relationship between the IOI and ODIHR, which will ensure effective support for strong and independent NHRIs in the OSCE region. The signing of the MoU is also meant to lead to further joint activities in the future. ODIHR and IOI already co-organized an expert meeting in Warsaw on the importance of NHRIs in November 2016.
At one of the plenary sessions, Günther Kräuter also introduced the IOI NPM-training, which will be taking place in Vienna from 25 – 27 September to representatives of the 57 OSCE-Member States as well as members of the civil society.
He emphasized that the third round of NPM trainings – after two successful trainings in Riga, Latvia and Vilnius, Lithuania – will take a special approach: The training will include interactive role play scenarios with professional trained actors to improve communication skills and techniques as well as providing the participants with a livestream to visits to two institutions to enable learning according to the “do-no-harm-principle”.
