The Ombudsman is regularly receiving communications from the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights following Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified military invasion and aggression against Ukraine. At the same time, various organisations of which the Portuguese Ombudsman is a member continue to speak out on the conflict: IOI – International Ombudsman Institute ENNHRI – European Network of National Human Rights Institutions FIO…
The Ombudsman welcomes the publication of Regulatory Decree no. 2022, of 10 January, which extended the scope of application of the Informal Carers Statute (ECI) to the entire national territory, establishing the terms and conditions for its recognition, as well as support measures for informal carers and persons being cared for Last November, the Ombudsman had sent a letter to…
The Ombudsman once again addressed a letter to the Secretary of State for Social Security, drawing attention to the persistence of situations of exclusion from extraordinary social support, decreed in the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic, that generate unjustified social deprotection. The insistence arises after the content of the first warning call, made in May 2021, signalling discrimination against the…
The Ombudsman sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Inclusion of Disabled Persons, in which she notes as positive the approval of Administrative Rule no. 230/2021, of 29 October, nevertheless drawing attention to the persistence of serious situations of social unprotection. The aforementioned Ministerial Order made it possible to render feasible the entitlement to Social Inclusion Benefit (PSI)…
To mark International Day of the Person with Disability, the Ombudsman presented a brief assessment of the activity developed by the telephone line especially dedicated to supporting these fellow citizens. Throughout 2022, in the period between 1st January and 30th November, the Disabled Citizens’ Line received 502 calls, a number that exceeds the total received in the previous year. Evolution…
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.
