The minority ombudsman has the power to investigate and determine individual complaints (including complaints brought by groups of individuals or organizations). The ombudsman is an institution for the achievement of justice and equity. It can criticize illegal behavior, but a breach of law is not strictly necessary: unreasonable or unjust behavior is a sufficient ground for action. Even if a decision is procedurally correct, it can still be considered unreasonable, unjust or inhumane by the ombudsman if it is unfair in its effect. The ombudsman will consider the quality of the decision made by the authority in question. Thus he or she not only provides for procedural justice but also for substantive justice. Upon finding some injustice, the means of redress available to the ombudsman are characteristic to its role. Its approach is not supposed to be adversarial: persuasion, conciliation or mediation are the means which are available to the ombudsman. The classical institution has no effective power to enforce its opinion; however, recommendations can be made, and publicity can be used in cases of non-compliance. That recommendations are non-binding can be seen as a strength in that a power to make binding decisions would need to be reviewable by some other state body, whereas it is the role of the ombudsman to be the overseer that justice is done. The means available for ombudspersons to combat violations of rights show that the institution is to have an educational role even in the case of solving individual complaints. The aim is not necessarily only to settle the particular issue in question, but to make the ‘respondent’ learn from the mistake, to understand the inhumanity, unjustness or irrationality of the provision or criterion applied, or of the practice used. The recommendations of the ombudsman will thus aim on the one hand for the resolution of grievances in the short term, on the other hand to the change of practices in the long term. Investigations by the ombudsman should extend to all realms of public life. The scope of action of the minority ombudsman institution should extend beyond public administration to public life in general including the private sector. This extension to the mandate of a parliamentary ombudsman can be justified by the aim of fighting discrimination, by the special vulnerability of members of minorities, and by the fact that they will face very similar problems and types of discrimination coming from private actors in their public life. Although the state is in most cases the largest employer and service provider, meaning that covering the arbitrary and unjust activities of the public administration will cover a large part of the violation of rights of members of minorities, it will nevertheless still exclude a large part of very similar violations committed by non-state actors. If the aim of the ombudsman is the advancement of equality, and the fight against racial or ethnic origin discrimination, it is very difficult to justify why this would imply only investigation of PART I Individual Complaints and Investigations 17