To mark International Human Rights Day, Deputy Ombudswoman Tatjana Vla\u0161i\u0107 delivered a lecture in Koprivnica on 12 December 2023, addressing the state of human rights and the rule of law in Croatia, with a special focus on public administration and its role in preventing human rights violations and in the protection of rights.<\/p>\n
The event was attended by the Prefect of the Koprivnica-Kri\u017eevci County, Darko Koren, as well as the Deputy Prefect and Chair of the County\u2019s Human Rights Coordination, Ratimir Ljubi\u0107. Also present were directors and other senior officials of public institutions from various sectors, including education, health care, and social welfare.<\/p>\n
Deputy Vla\u0161i\u0107 emphasized that citizens are still, unfortunately, insufficiently aware of their rights and therefore often fail to recognize when those rights are being violated. This is why the institution continues to stress the importance of introducing comprehensive civic education, including human rights education, across all levels of the education system and from an early age.<\/p>\n
She also praised the initiative of the City of Kri\u017eevci, one of the local governments that has already introduced civic education. She further noted that the extent to which human rights are realized at the regional and local levels is significantly influenced by the degree of development of individual local and regional self-government units, and that disparities in development often lead to unequal access to rights and services.<\/p>\n
Deputy Vla\u0161i\u0107 also stressed that the right to good governance is part of the legal acquis of the European Union and one of the principles contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a legally binding document that both the county and local authorities must apply in their work. Regarding citizens’ complaints related to the work of public administration that we receive, they most often concern the silence of the administration\u2014that is, the failure to respond to citizens\u2019 inquiries\u2014then the lengthy duration of procedures, as well as insufficient information provided to citizens about the services offered by certain bodies and the related procedures, especially in a simple and understandable manner.<\/p>\n
She also addressed the necessity of citizen participation in decision-making processes as one of the ways to strengthen public trust in institutions\u2014which remains low in Croatia\u2014and highlighted the importance of cooperation with civil society organisations, as also noted in the European Commission\u2019s Rule of Law Report.<\/p>\n
Deputy Vla\u0161i\u0107 touched on a number of specific topics as well, including housing issues, the rights of older persons, health insurance and health care, challenges in realizing the rights of members of the Roma national minority, and the digitalisation of public administration services, which, as a result, remain inaccessible to some groups of citizens. She concluded that public administration which manages to respond to the needs of citizens is also one that effectively prevents violations of their rights.<\/p>\n
The lecture was organised as part of a regional project implemented by the Office of the Ombudswoman in cooperation with the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), funded by the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To mark International Human Rights Day, Deputy Ombudswoman Tatjana Vla\u0161i\u0107 delivered a lecture in Koprivnica on 12 December 2023, addressing the state of human rights and the rule of law in Croatia, with a special focus on public administration and its role in preventing human rights violations and in the protection of rights. The event […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ombudsman.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}