The entity of an ombudsman was first created in Sweden in 1809 and was responsible for safeguarding of the fair activities of the police and judicial organs. The name “ombudsman” also has a Swedish origin and has become an international term for describing such entities. More than 100 years later, in 1919, a similar office was established in Finland and 36 more years later in Denmark. Ombudsman organisation became especially popular in the 1960s, when it was implemented in many European countries, New Zealand, Canada and other countries.
A developing factor for the ombudsman entity was the 1972 Resolution by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, which urged members of the Council of Europe to implement the office of ombudsman. In 1980s and 1990s such entities were created in many South American and Eastern European countries, including Latvia’s neighbour states: Lithuania in 1995 and Estonia in 1999.
In the mid-1990s a discussion on еру creation of an institution that would safeguard individual rights was taking place in Latvia as well. Immediately after the restoration of independence on 4 May 1990, Latvia joined the key international human rights documents, while 1994 saw the creation of national programme “Protection and improvement of human rights” in response to an appeal from the 1993 Vienna global UN human rights conference.
One of proposals in еру discussion taking place in the Parliament in 1995 was to complement the State administration with an independent institution based on the Scandinavian ombudsman precedent. It was decided, however, that the State was not ready for the creation of such an institution and that the most essential functions of the institution at the time were education and the improvement of human rights in the country. On the basis of this task, the aforementioned national programme, UN Paris Principles relating to the status and functioning of national institutions for the protection and promotion of human rights and experience of a similar institution in Australia, the Latvian National Human Rights Office (hereinafter referred to as LNHRO) was created.
The LNHRO was established on 18 July 1995 as a State institution, which promotes basic human and citizen rights and liberties in Latvia. Olafs Brūvers was elected as the Director of LNHRO in 1997 and remained in the post after re-election until 2005. From 2005 until 1 January 2007 the functions of director were exercised by the Deputy Director Diāna Šmite.
LNHRO was an independent State institution, which was responsible for considering complaints related to any violation of human rights. Compared to the ombudsman establishments of other countries, the LNHRO could be defined as a special human rights ombudsman, which, apart from considering complaints, was also granted a mandate to carry out other activities according to the Paris Principles. The Law on the Latvian National Human Rights Office defined three key types of activity: registration and consideration of individual complaints, analysis and research of the human rights situation and social education and information on the subject of human rights.
From 1995 until late 2006 the LNHRO received and considered a total of 48,003 personal complaints on the potential violation of human rights. The most frequent reasons for appeal to LNHRO were right to housing, social security, humane treatment and respect in places of detainment and questions of persons’ legal status. These problems were solved in many cases. The LNHRO frequently provided opinions on various aspects of human rights to the Parliament and other State and municipal institutions, published reports on current human rights problems, carried out inspections in closed institutions, organised informational and educational events, etc.
Unfortunately, the work of the LNHRO was adversely affected by a lack of resources and State support. This was reflected in the then State President’s Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga’s speech at the December 2006 conference dedicated to the establishment of the Ombudsman’s institution: “The State Human Rights Office hitherto continuously suffered from the lack of State awareness and financial support. For a year and a half the office was operating without a leader elected and approved by the Parliament, because politicians were unable to agree on a suitable candidate. Let us be honest – the support the office has been receiving until now is just sufficient for existence but absolutely insufficient for development, not even to mention competitive salaries for attraction of human rights experts and lawyers.”
Other kinds of problems arose as well. The most significant one: in situations when State and municipal authorities violated personal rights, however, this violation was not related to human rights, the individuals were unable to defend their rights in a proper manner. The LNHRO could not help either, because matters of such kind were not in the LNHRO’s scope of competency.
Therefore, despite the establishment and successful operation of the LNHRO, there was an ongoing social discussion about the creation of an institution, which would not only promote human rights, but also work on the implementation and execution of principle of good administration. Taking into account a suggestion by the World Bank, the State Administration Development Strategy until 2000 approved at the 23 December 1997 meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers prescribed to evaluate the options of development of an ombudsman institution until 1999. The 1998 National Latvian programme for integration in the European Union also clearly underlined the need for an ombudsman institution to improve the institutional system of State administration and reporting of offices and employees on achieved results in particular.
Yet, actual procedures on the creation of an ombudsman institution were commenced in August 2000, when a task force for development of the concept of a Latvian Ombudsman was assembled by the initiative of the State President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. It was headed by Professor Juris Dreifelds and included representatives of the Chancery of the State President, Association of Lawyers, Constitutional Court, LNHRO, professors of the University of Latvia, lawyers and representatives of several public organisations and other entities. On 16 January 2001 the draft concept was submitted to the State President and the discussion began.
In response to the request by Chancery of the State President to evaluate the concept and the necessity for an ombudsman institution in Latvia, international organisations became involved in this process. Representatives of the United Nations Development Programme and Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe created an international expert mission – a task force whose main task was to study the Latvian mechanisms of protection of human rights and issues of ensuring an efficient State administration system.
On 22 May 2001 the task force presented its report. The experts pointed out that there must be a decision, which would allow Latvian society to appeal to an independent supervision mechanism also in cases of bad governance, regardless of the presence or absence of human rights aspect. Three institutional models were proposed for achievement of this goal. The first one: two separate institutions might co-exist – one human rights and one for ensuring responsibility towards society and guaranteeing of the principle of good administration. The second model was a “sector ombudsman on the basis of the LNHRO”. In this model several ombudsman offices, for example, the traditional (the aforementioned Scandinavian) one, data protection and equal treatment ombudsmen, children’s rights ombudsman have retained independence of actions, yet operate within one central office. And finally, the third model, which was recommended by the experts, provided for expansion of the capabilities of the LNHRO to include not only issues concerning human rights, but also all those in any manner related to the bad governance of the State.
A significant step in promoting discussion was the conference “Creation of an ombudsman institution in Latvia”, which took place on 2 June 2001 and was organised with the help of the aforementioned organisations and Information Centre of the Nordic Council of Ministers, and included discussions about the proposals by experts.
On the basis of these proposals and opinions expressed during the discussion, in 2002 the task force established by the State President developed a draft law: “Ombudsman Office Law”. The aim of this law was to establish a special State institution – the Ombudsman Office to promote human rights and ensure more efficient control over the validity and fairness of actions by public right subjects and executives thereof in administrative cases. The plan provided for the creation of an Ombudsman Office on the basis of the LNHRO and distribution of competency among five ombudsmen with equal authority: an ombudsman of general human rights; ombudsman of children’s rights; municipal ombudsman; ombudsman of legal, internal and military affairs and ombudsman of procedural rights. This model was faced with negative criticism by experts, because a fragmented institution with multiple independent ombudsmen arouses confusion in society as to which one should be addressed and also contributes to the overlapping of competencies.
2003 saw the creation of a new task force under the Chancery of the State President, which was assigned the task to develop a draft law regulating the institution of ombudsman. The task force selected a new institution approach, i.e., the third option proposed by the aforementioned international group of experts providing for expansion of authority of the LNHRO. The office would be headed by one ombudsman with an extensive range of authority, including the right to instigate inspection procedures (by personal initiative as well), the right to arrive at any company, organisation or institution subjected to inspection and get familiarised with data necessary for inspection, the right to visit closed institutions without special approval, to freely move within the territory of institution, to visit all premises and meet persons held in closed institutions, the right to hear a child’s opinion without the presence of other persons, if the child desires so, the right to apply to court in order to protect rights and legal interests of persons. In response to the proposal by the LNHRO, the task force supported the idea of allowing the Ombudsman to consider cases related to violation of the principle of equal treatment by private subjects of the law.
During this period, the name for the Latvian ombudsman institution was defined. The Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Sciences recognised “Tiesībsargs” (literally “Defender of Rights”) as the most appropriate name for the ombudsman institution. In 2003, this name was accepted by the Ombudsman draft law development task force.
The Ombudsman Law was passed on 6 April 2006 and became effective on 1 January 2007. Unfortunately, active search for candidates for this post was delayed until December 2006 and, as a result, at the moment of the Law coming into effect the Ombudsman institution lacked an approved chairman. The new institution, however, commenced work, because the Ombudsman Law states that the Ombudsman is the legal successor of the LNHRO and all former employees of LNHRO agreed to work in the new establishment.
The first attempt to elect the Ombudsman was on 11 January 2007. Two candidates were nominated for this post: the Head of the Department of State Rights of the Faculty of Law of the University of Latvia and sworn solicitor Ringolds Balodis and politologist Rasma Kārkliņa. However, in the three rounds of voting neither candidate received support from the majority of the Parliament. Furthermore, in the last round Ringolds Balodis received 44 votes for, while 47 MPs voted against.
It was decided to select new candidates until 15 February 2007 and upon expiry of this term the only nominee was the judge of the Constitutional Court Romāns Apsītis. On 1 March 2007 he was approved in the post of the first Ombudsman of the Republic of Latvia with an absolute majority of 70 votes.
