Institute of Military Ombudsman in Norway: Novels in Constitutional and Legal Regulation

The purpose of the research. In state mechanism of some foreign countries, there is an independent organ of the Ombudsman for the Armed Forces (the so-called military ombudsman), which can be described as a link between the army and society. The military ombudsman is to perform the function of an intermediary (mediator) in military-civil relations, on the one hand, and to serve as an institutional guarantee of the observance of military personnel’s rights and interests, as well as rights and freedoms of the persons who are subjects to military conscription, on the other hand. This article performs the analysis of the legal status, tasks and activities of the Parliamentary Committee of the Ombudsman for the Armed Forces of Norway, which collectively performs the function of the military ombudsman in this country. The article is written on the basis of an analysis of the Law on the Parliamentary Committee for the Armed Forces in Norway in 2021, which replaced the Instructions for this body adopted in 1952. The authors pay special attention to novelties in regulating the status and functioning of this quasi-parliamentary structure. The results. With the adoption of special legislation on the activities of the military ombudsman in Norway, its status was also increased: if earlier its activities were regulated by a subordinate normative act, now—by the act of higher legal force. The current law expands the powers of the Parliamentary Committee for the Norwegian Armed Forces to control the legality of the activities of the military administration, increases the number of the performed functions, first of all related to international cooperation in the relevant field, and makes an attempt to more clearly distinguish between the jurisdiction of parliamentary military and civilian ombudsmen. The existence of a specialized institution of the parliamentary military ombudsman in Norway provides a higher level of control over the protection of the rights and interests of military personnel, and also contributes to a more competent approach to considering issues related to military personnel.