The Ombudsman conducts monitoring of detention facilities and institutions in Greenland

Publiceret 18-08-2025

In the end of August and beginning of September, a monitoring team from the Danish Parliamentary Ombudsman is going to visit a number of institutions, police stations and municipal bailiffs in Greenland. The monitoring team will in the institutions investigate the conditions for those deprived of their liberty. 

In the institutions, the Ombudsman’s monitoring team is going to examine, among other things, the institutions’ use of force and interventions, including solitary confinement and disciplinary measures. In addition, the Ombudsman will focus on healthcare-related conditions for the inmates and on their possibility for work and education.

The Ombudsman’s monitoring team will during the visits to the institutions talk with both management, staff and inmates.

In the detention facilities, the monitoring will have a special focus on security-related conditions for those placed in detention facilities.

Monitoring is a core task

The monitoring visits in Greenland are part of the Ombudsman’s general monitoring activities to prevent degrading treatment of people deprived of their liberty.

‘It is one of the Ombudsman’s core tasks to make sure that those deprived of their liberty are treated with dignity, consideration and in accordance with their rights, while they are in the authorities’ custody’, says Parliamentary Ombudsman Christian Britten Lundblad.

The Ombudsman is going to carry out monitoring visits in a total of 11 institutions in both East Greenland and West Greenland.

 

Further details:

Director of International Relations, Klavs Kinnerup Hede, kkh@ombudsmanden.dk

Facts

The Parliamentary Ombudsman carries out regular monitoring visits in public and private institutions, especially where people are or can be deprived of their liberty. The Ombudsman’s work to prevent degrading treatment etc. is carried out in cooperation with the Danish Institute for Human Rights and with DIGNITY – Danish Institute Against Torture.

In Greenland, the Parliamentary Ombudsman monitors solely state authorities, including the police and the Prison and Probation Service. The Ombudsman for Inatsisartut monitors Greenlandic self-governing authorities.