The Ombudsman for Children: Human Rights Protection and Promotion

The single-sector ombudsman has been used to provide a monitoring, protective and accountability device for specific categories of individuals who come into contact with the administrative arm of the state. The single-sector ombudsman model was discussed in Chapter 2. The international community has promoted the establishment of national human rights institutions for children, primarily the ombudsman for children, since the 1990s, following domestic developments in Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the creation of domestic institutions for children has been haphazard, with a variety of institutions established with differing degrees of independence and powers. Some ombudsmen for children do not have the same levels of independence or powers of investigation compared to the legislative ombudsman. Others have additional mandates taken from the human rights commission or human rights ombudsman models. The advocate model has been adopted in some jurisdictions for child protection.