BackFinish Parliamentary Ombudsman Petri Jääskeläinen presented his Annual Report for 2010 to the Speaker of the Eduskunta on Wednesday 8.6.2010.
Ombudsman Petri Jääskeläinen deals in his commentary article with new legislation under which a national human rights institution in accordance with the UN-approved Paris Principles will be established in Finland at the beginning of 2012. At the same time, the procedures relating to handling complaints are being developed. The Ombudsman regards the reforms as historic.
A Human Rights Centre, which will have a Human Rights Delegation, will be created under the aegis of the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman at the beginning of 2012. The Centre will be operationally autonomous and independent, but administratively a part of the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Its responsibility will include a variety of general tasks associated with promotion, implementation and monitoring of fundamental and human rights, but it will not deal with complaints.
What is of essential relevance is that the human rights institution will comprise all three bodies, i.e. the Human Rights Centre, the Human Rights Delegation and the Ombudsman's present tasks. Thus the totality of the institution?s tasks and its powers will be as broad as possible.
In the view of Ombudsman Jääskeläinen, the human rights institution is needed because of international cooperation. In some international connections, a status in accordance with the Paris Principles can be a downright prerequisite for participation or being entitled to speak. A human rights institution is necessary also to meet purely national needs. It will gather together Finland's fragmented human rights structures and provide a forum for cooperation between them and coordinating their activities.
The legislative reforms relating to handling complaints, which came into effect at the beginning of June 2011, will make it possible to focus resources on matters in which the Ombudsman can help the complainant or which are genuinely significant from the perspective of observance of the law and protection under it or implementation of fundamental and human rights. This will increase the effectiveness of the Ombudsman's work.
On the whole, the reforms mean the beginning of a new era. They will strengthen people's protection under the law and promote implementation of fundamental and human rights.
Most complaints about the police, social welfare and health care and prisons
The Ombudsman received nearly 4,100 complaints in 2010. Once again, half of them were accounted for by a few large categories of cases: police, social welfare, health care and the prison service.
The number of complaints has increased by about 65% in the past ten years. The most important reason for this is growth in the numbers of complaints in the large categories. More than half of all complaints arrive by e-mail.
The Ombudsman issued decisions on about 4,000 complaints in 2010.
Of all decisions made on complaints in 2010, 782 or nearly 20% led to measures. The number of decisions involving measures has risen in recent years. The measures available to the Ombudsman are a proposal, the expression of an opinion, a reprimand and a prosecution.
Also where measures were concerned, the greater part were accounted for by the police, social welfare and health care and the prison service. This corresponds also to the long-term pattern.
By contrast, few measures are directed at courts, tax authorities, prosecutors and the social insurance sector. This is due in part to the fact that what is often involved in complaints is court judgements, in the contents of which the Ombudsman can not generally intervene.
One of the Ombudsman's tasks is to conduct inspections in official agencies and institutions. The most important sites inspected are prisons, police detention facilities, psychiatric hospitals and units of the Defence Forces. At 68, the number of inspection visits conducted in 2010 was an increase on the previous year's figure.
The Ombudsman's Annual Report is published in Finnish and Swedish. An English summary will be published in autumn. It will be then be made available on this website.
Source: http://www.oikeusasiamies.fi/Resource.phx/pubman/templates/2.htx?id=754
