cooperation The revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, were adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2015. The rules are recommendations intended to ensure that all prisoners in the world are treated humanely and in accordance with generally accepted principles and practices. The Finnish translation of the rules and the introduction were published in February 2017. The publication seminar of the Finnish edition was attended by several legal advisers from the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The UN representative attending the seminar was Mr Philipp Meissner, Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer. In March 2017, the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman organised internal training on the removal of foreign nationals from the country and return flights. The trainers were representatives of the Helsinki Police Department and the Office of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman. Another training event held in May focused on human trafficking, with trainers from the Office of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman and Victim Support Finland. One of the on-duty lawyers of the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman participated in a seminar in Copenhagen in April 2017 entitled “The Use of Solitary Confinement as a Disciplinary Measure”, which was organised by Dignity – Danish Institute Against Torture. The other on-duty lawyer attended the four-day training course “Detention monitoring applying the UN Nelson Mandela Rules”, held in Bristol in August 2017. In 2017, two officials from the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman attended a three-day training event in Vienna, jointly organised for NPMs by the Austria NPM, IOI (International Ombudsman Institute) and APT (Association for the Prevention of Torture). The training event was a continuation of similar sessions held in previous years in Riga and Vilnius. The theme of this year’s training was “Communications skills and techniques”. Three legal advisers attended the criminal sanctions field seminar on the theme of appeals, organised by the Criminal Sanctions Agency and the Department of Criminal Policy at the Ministry of Justice in October 2017. The target group of the meeting and training event were lawyers from the Criminal Sanctions Agency and the administrative courts, and its focus was on prisoners’ right of appeal. In November 2017, the on-duty lawyer at the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman attended a training course on the self-determination of the intellectually disabled and the use of restrictive measures, organised by Valvira and the Regional State Administrative Agencies. In addition, the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman held several information events during 2017, aimed at the entire staff and communicating the main content of the above training events and meetings. Whenever necessary, the OPCAT coordinator also provides training for new staff members at the Office on the duties of the NPM. 15