The chairman of the ombudsman’s secretariat spoke about the main areas of the parliamentary ombudsman’s activities and about the institution of regional representatives.

The guests were also told about the monitoring of human rights conducted in the country, learnt about the ombudsman’s cooperation with national and foreign partners, with international human rights organizations including American partners in the field of human rights.

For her part, Holly Thomas presented information about the US government’s human rights activities, preparation of the State Department report for 2009, the embassy’s efforts to collect human rights materials and about the implementation of intergovernmental agreements.

She asked questions about the nature of complaints, filed with the ombudsman, and the procedure for dealing with them; monitoring of human rights; visits to penitentiary institutions; the establishment of specialized ombudsmen; cooperation with NGOs in human rights protection; the impact of the introduction of habeas corpus; and the abolition of the death penalty in Uzbekistan.

The sides expressed the common stance that cooperation between Uzbekistan and the USA in human rights should develop; that State Department’s reports should be objective and based on reliable information, and should reveal trends in the development of civil society.

Detailed information was provided on issues of interest to the sides, and materials about the Uzbek parliamentary ombudsman’s activities were presented to the embassy official.