MONITORING ACTIVITIES TOLERATED RESIDENCE STATUS – BEHIND THE CASE European Convention on Human Rights. The aforesaid conventions stipulate that no individual must be subjected to torture nor to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. However, after having compared the general conditions at ‘Center Sandholm’ to the conventions we reached the conclusion that no conventions had been breached. But, as mentioned before, our task was also to assess the conditions on the grounds of ‘universal human and humanitarian considerations’ pursuant to the Ombudsman Act. Naturally, this assessment has a wider scope than when the Ombudsman on a daily basis assesses for instance whether a ministry has given access to documents in accordance with the regulations. The Ombudsman has assessed many previous cases on the basis of ‘universal human and humanitarian considerations’, but the conditions for persons under tolerated residence status at ‘Center Sandholm’ differ in several important aspects from our previous observations. Therefore, we examined all the individual elements of the measure. We assessed how the measure affects persons under tolerated residence status in general. We also assessed the importance of the fact that the measure is of indefinite duration. In this connection, we noted that the Danish Red Cross, which is in charge of ‘Center Sandholm’, described common traits for persons under tolerated residence status in the form of, for instance, declining resources, abuse and isolation. And DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture spoke of ‘clear signs of severe mental stress’ based on a medical assessment. POLITICAL QUESTIONS Another important consideration was that the conditions for persons under tolerated residence status are partly laid down in the Aliens Act. It is not the Ombudsman’s task to take a position on, for instance, the reasonableness of legislation passed by Parliament, and we did not take a position in this case either. But on the other hand, we could not, as is our task pursuant to the Ombudsman Act, assess the conditions for persons under tolerated residence status without including the purpose of the legislation for this target group. In his report, the Ombudsman pointed out that the group of persons under tolerated residence status is very complex. Therefore, the considerations behind the legislation take effect to a varying degree. One of the purposes of tolerated 67