The people’s advocate

The Swedish term ombudsman has been adopted in many places around the world to denote an official tasked with scrutinising the actions of public authorities on behalf of citizens. The word ombudsman comes from the Old Norse umboðsmaðr. It has been documented in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic sources since the Middle Ages as a general term for a person who represents another. Sweden’s first official ombudsman – the ‘Supreme Ombudsman’ – was appointed in 1713 by King Charles XII to monitor the running of the country during his exile in Turkey.

That was not the first time in history a ruler appointed some sort of representative to scrutinise his officials, though. In China in the third century bce, the Qin emperor dispatched a ‘secret inspector’ to check on the provincial management and people’s opinions of the authorities. In the Roman Empire, tribunes served similar functions.

But it was Sweden that created the first ombudsman in the modern sense: an official who represents and safeguards citizens’ rights and interests vis-à-vis executive authority. That was in 1809, when Sweden adopted a new constitution based on the French philosopher Montesquieu’s division of power into three functions: legislative, judicial and executive. The position of Parliamentary Ombudsman, appointed by the Swedish parliament, was created as a counterpart to the Chancellor of Justice, who represented the government.

A new constitution had become necessary as a result of King Gustav IV Adolf’s method of ruling. He had, in an unfortunate way, drawn Sweden into the Napoleonic Wars and had lost the territory of Finland – the eastern half of the Swedish Empire – to Russia. In the spring of 1809, a group of leading noblemen rebelled and deposed the king. The Swedish parliament drew up a new constitution, inspired by 18th-century Enlightenment ideals, to prevent a recurrence of the authoritarianism practised by Gustav IV Adolf’s father, King Gustav III. One check on the monarch’s power was the newly created position of Parliamentary Ombudsman, who would safeguard subjects’ rights on behalf of parliament.

Anyone in Sweden can submit a complaint to the ombudsman if they think a public authority has acted unlawfully or arbitrarily or committed an abuse of power. Today, Sweden has five such offices in addition to the original Parliamentary Ombudsman. They deal with areas including disability discrimination and children’s rights. Over 80 countries around the world have introduced ombudsmen after this model. In fact, the Swedish word ombudsman is used in a number of English-speaking countries, including Australia (the Commonwealth Ombudsman), Pakistan (Federal Ombudsman) and Ireland (the Office of the Ombudsman). The word is also used in Dutch, for de federale ombudsman. Other countries have created their own names for the same function, such as France (le Mediáteur de la République), Peru (Defensoría del Pueblo), Poland (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich) and Romania (Avocatul Poporului), to name just a few. Most of these ombudsmen – or ombudspersons, as they are often called nowadays – were established in the last half-century. The first country after Sweden to establish an ombudsman was Finland in 1919. That brought things full circle, since it was the loss of Finland that led to the creation of the office of Sweden’s first ombudsman.

Ombudsmen play a key role in monitoring the actions of government and public authorities.