Our lives are influenced every day by rights and responsibilities. It’s not just about morality, a set of moral rules we follow without them being written somewhere, but mainly about legal norms that create boundaries for what we have the right to do and what is prohibited.
No aspect of our lives – from birth to death – can avoid dealing with public authorities, such as offices, institutions, local governments, ministries, police, and many other components. These public authorities can sometimes surprise people with their decisions or, more often, their inaction, leading to the violation of their basic rights.
Defending oneself against this and seeking justice is often beyond the abilities and strengths of an ordinary person. One of the institutions that selflessly helps people is the public defender of rights. All our basic human rights and freedoms are anchored in the Constitution of the Slovak Republic. The state guarantees them to us through this fundamental law, and only some of them can be limited, and even that after a demanding legislative process. At the same time, it is said that the biggest violator of human rights is the state itself.
As our constitution states, the Public Defender of Rights is an independent body of the Slovak Republic, which, in the scope and manner established by law, protects the basic rights and freedoms of individuals and legal entities in proceedings before public administration bodies and other public authorities if their actions, decisions, or inaction are contrary to the legal order. In cases established by law, the public defender of rights may participate in holding persons acting in public authorities accountable if these persons have violated the basic rights or freedoms of individuals and legal entities. All public authorities provide the public defender of rights with the necessary cooperation.
When the ombudsman receives a complaint from residents, in processing it, he can enter public administration bodies – whether courts, ministries, municipal and local authorities, prisons, or police premises – and request all necessary files, documents, as well as an explanation of the complaint. He can even ask employees of offices and institutions questions to obtain information needed to clarify the complaint. If individuals are detained and placed, for example, in a police detention cell, in custody, serving a sentence of imprisonment, or in institutional treatment, the public defender of rights can speak with them even without the presence of other persons (such as an investigator, a member of the Prison Service, etc.).
In practice, this means that if a citizen feels that a judge caused unnecessary delays in a judicial proceeding, leading to a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to a timely trial, the ombudsman can even propose disciplinary action against such a judge. However, the public defender of rights does not have the power to impose sanctions and is not authorized to make decisions in matters. Anyone can turn to the ombudsman. It doesn’t have to be just a citizen of our country, but also a foreigner who lives here permanently or is in a police detention facility for foreigners.