BackThe Office of the Northern Ireland Ombudsman and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission accepted an invitation from the Austrian Ombudsman Board (AOB) and presented the product of a joint project on a “Human Rights based approach to the Ombudsman work” to AOB staff in Vienna on 25 February 2015.
Ms Marie Anderson (Deputy Northern Ireland Ombudsman) and Ms Virginia McVea (Director of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission) presented the outcome of this joint project: the „Human Rights Manual“. They demonstrated how this dynamic instrument assists Ombudsman staff during the assessment of cases and ensures that human rights principles and standards are taken into consideration and are furthermore used as a benchmark in order to establish if there has been maladministration on the part of public authorities.
The “Human Rights Manual” is available as interactive PDF and formatted with internal and external hyperlinks. The IOI has assisted the Ombudsman by providing an element of funding for the joint project from its regional subsidy scheme and has encouraged and supported the project at all stages.
The AOB was very pleased to be able to offer this workshop to its staff members. In her opening remark Ombudswoman Gertrude Brinek pointed out that “Human Rights are in the center of every Ombudsman’s work and the violation of these human rights constitutes the most severe form of maladministration.” She further stressed that “a human rights-based approach therefore needs to be applied to our complaint handling process and to find its way into our daily working routine.”
Source: Austrian Ombudsman Board, Austria
