Commissioner for Human Rights

[22/08/08 11:00] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by Ambassador Eberhard Kölsch and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, signed yesterday an agreement to support the Commissioner's cooperation activities with national human rights structures (NHRSs) in the Organisation's member States.

The Office of the Commissioner will receive a grant of 150,000 euros to sustain its efforts to help NHRSs develop their preventive and monitoring role, thus contributing to strengthening the protection of human rights at the domestic level.

"The contribution of Germany represents an important support to meet the increasing demand from NHRSs to be trained on the Council of Europe standards" said the Commissioner.

The grant will be used to implement five activities until the end of 2008, such as: a compendium of summaries of the 2006 and 2007 activity reports of NHRSs; a pilot training project for a national mechanism for the prevention of torture; a contribution to the organisation of a conference on the independence and integrity of ombudsman institutions; ad hoc activities of the Commissioner and his Office in the Caucasus and a workshop on accessing relevant information on the Council of Europe system.

The Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights has been cooperating with NHRSs since 2004. With the Round table in Athens held in April 2007, an enhanced co-operation started to gradually develop an effective co-operation system with NHRSs to foster the implementation of European human rights standards across member States.

See also

Commissioner's webpage dedicated to the cooperation with NHRS