The NPM – National Preventive Mechanism carried out joint visits to places of detention with its UK counterpart in November. The British NPM participated in the visits to the Detention Space at Lisbon Airport and to the Torres Novas prison establishment, and the Portuguese NPM team took part in the inspection of Garth prison, in Lancashire. The joint visits stem…
The Ombudsperson, Maria Lúcia Amaral, received, on 25 October, the Parliamentary Secretary of State of the Federal Ministry of Justice of Germany, Benjamin Strasser, accompanied by the Head of Division for Coordination and Cooperation Affairs within the European Union, Lutz Roth, and the Minister Counsellor of the German Embassy, Ludwig Blaurock. During the meeting, issues related to the role of…
The Ombudsman’s Senior Citizens’ Hotline received 1,239 calls to date this year, with the greatest number of requests for assistance related to health (167). This data may confirm the inversion observed in 2021, when, for the first time in the 23 years of existence of this line dedicated to assisting senior citizens, health questions exceeded those related to social responses,…
The Ombudsman addressed an alert to the competent authorities after receiving various complaints from foreign citizens reporting difficulties encountered with services provided by the Institute of Social Security (ISS, IP) that are not taking into account the exceptional rules in force in relation to the regularity of their stay in national territory, thereby blocking access to various social benefits. At…
The Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, was received in audience by the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, on July 21, at 11:00 am, following the delivery of the Annual Activity Report and the Report of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture regarding 2021. Learn more here.
The Ombudsman’s Office sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Social Security in which it questions the restrictive manner in which the Civil Servants Pension Scheme (CGA) is applying the rules of access to early retirement for long contributory careers (46 years). For the purposes of access to this form of early retirement, the CGA has been demanding…
On 2 December, at 12.30 pm, Professor Maria Lúcia da Conceição Abrantes Amaral took up her post as Ombudsman for a second mandate, in a ceremony presided over by the President of the Assembly of the Republic. Under the terms of the provisions established in no. 3 of article 23 of the Constitution, on 19 November, the Assembly of the…
The Deputy Ombudsman, Teresa Anjinho, addressed the 10th UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, which takes place from 29 November to 1 December 2021, under the theme: “The next decade of business and human rights: increasing the pace and scale of action to implement the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” Teresa Anjinho participated in the Forum as…
The 25th magna meeting of the Ibero-American Federation of Ombudsmen (FIO) took place between 24 and 26 November in the Dominican Republic under the theme “Pandemic, good administration and Human Rights The meeting allowed representatives from 22 Ibero-American countries to analyse and exchange points of view, based on their experiences, on the impacts of the pandemic, in particular among those…
The Ombudsman recommended to the Regional Secretary of Finances of the Regional Government of Madeira an alteration to the understanding adopted thus far by the Autonomous Regional Administration in relation to the method of counting justified absences on consecutive days, due to death of a family member. In contrast to the arguments sustained in the specific case that motivated the…
