Overview The experts in the multidisciplinary commissions help us to identify weaknesses, define human rights monitoring standards and determine cases of maladministration. It was a priority in 2013 to create the conditions for knowledge management based on co-operation. Specifically, the aim was to sum up the individual observations and research from individual cases of experts working on site in a coherent structural analysis. The involvement of the Human Rights Advisory Council as the AOB‘s advisory body during this process made it possible to take a close look at specific problems from different perspectives and to define national standards. High level of expertise: Commissions and Human Rights Advisory Council It is not only necessary to remind institutions of the specific human rights codified in international and national law. Politics also require such a reminder to ensure that they are taken into account in the balancing act between these and other entitlements. As a result, it is of great importance to the AOB to be entitled to attend and speak at the plenary sessions of all Laender governments. Currently, the AOB only does so in Vienna, Salzburg and Styria. Right to attend and speak at sessions of all Laender governments Especially my area of responsibility often deals with complaints regarding social matters. In the last few weeks, I have received a large number of complaints about the Austrian Public Employment Service, regarding courses, which apparently did not meet the agreed targets and quality requirements. Complaints were not just brought to my attention by elderly people on the brink of retirement, but also by highly qualified job-seekers, who were forced into apparently senseless training courses or who were assigned to beginner training in spite of their expert knowledge. Social matters Contrary to Article 15a of the Austrian Constitution, Styria is the only Land which stipulates a concept in which the parents and/or children of a person receiving benefits, are obliged to provide maintenance to compensate social welfare authorities for any minimum benefit or social welfare payments. This can only be qualified as clean break of the political consensus between the Federal Government and its Laender to the detriment of families. The AOB is once more asking that this unequal treatment should cease. It is also unclear why there are still such profound deficits in basic care for asylum seekers in spite of clear national and international requirements. This is drastically evidenced by the identification of deficits and the AOB‘s recommendation regarding a facility for asylum seekers on the Saualm in Carinthia or similar institutions and facilities in Burgenland. It is also particularly important to me to appeal to all political decision-makers to take seriously the results of the official country review by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Any existing legal provisions with a discriminating effect must be replaced by general rules dedicated to the principle of inclusion. Compliance with universally applicable human rights must not fail due to the distribution of competences between the Federal Government and the Laender, which regrettably must - still - be emphasised. 25

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