Pravni vjesnik, Vol. 42 No. 2, 2026.
Professional paper
https://doi.org/10.25234/pv/36729
THE ROLE OF THE OMBUDSMAN IN THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS : THE PROTECTOR OF CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA
Milan Rapajić
; Faculty of Law, University of Kragujevac, Jovana Cvijića 1, 34000 Kragujevac, Serbia
*
Dejan Logarušić
orcid.org/0000-0001-9782-9277
; Faculty of Law for Commerce and Judiciary, University Business Academy in Novi Sad, Geri Karolja 1, 21107 Novi Sad, Serbia
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The Ombudsman is an institution of non-judicial, external and parliamentary control of public administration, which was founded in 1809 in Sweden. For more than a century, it remained an institution specific to that country, before spreading to more than 100 countries during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The paper is divided into three sections: the first sets out general considerations concerning the ombudsman, the second section examines the increasingly prominent role of the ombudsman in the protection of citizens’ human rights, whereby the ombudsman functions as a national human rights protector, and, finally, the third section is devoted to the Protector of citizens of the Republic of Serbia, as the central national institution for the protection of human rights. Initially, the ombudsman was conceived as a specific form of control of public administration, and much less as a human rights protection mechanism. Legal control is not the only control undertaken by the ombudsman, which means that he does not only control legality, but also focuses on control of expediency, efficiency and even fairness. In addition to the traditional ombudsman model (as it was conceived in Sweden and Denmark), a hybrid model has also developed. This model has, for example, been adopted in Serbia, where it acts both as a controller of public administration and as a protector of human rights. A further model, that of a human rights protector, has been adopted in the other former Yugoslav republics. With the adoption of the new 2006 Constitution, Serbia established the Protector of Citizens as a constitutional institution. This body functions as a national institution for the protection of human rights and as a national preventive mechanism for the prevention of torture, in which capacity it cooperates with relevant international institutions. The main hypothesis advanced in the paper is that certain provisions of the 2021 Law on the Ombudsman represent, in fact, a step backwards compared with the 2005 Law.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
349541
URI
Publication date:
19.7.2026.
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