2014 AT THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION been on, for example, re-education stays in their native country. In these cases, the child’s residence permit will have expired, but the authorities can grant an exemption or give the child a new residence permit. On the basis of a Supreme Court judgment from November 2012 and on our own initiative, we raised the question of the authorities’ practice in these cases ‒ especially with the aim of ensuring that this practice complies fully with the European Convention on Human Rights. This led to an adjustment of the authorities’ practice so that the assessment is now less rigid and relies particularly on a concrete assessment of the extent to which the child has been formed by Danish society already before the re-education period abroad. These are questions which are important to the life and fate of quite a few children. However, the case did not receive much attention. Maybe it lacked a particular child to be its ‘face’. Maybe the case was associated too much with dry, administrative practices and too little with the fate of people. But the fate of people was precisely what it was all about (news item of 1 September 2014). Another case concerned the conditions for live-born but inevitably dying infants who had been born after an abortion or as extremely early births (Annual Report 2012, Case No. 2012-10). This was a case we raised back in 2011 after press coverage of how these children in some cases were left to die alone in the sluice rooms of the hospital maternity wards. The case gave rise to a lengthy dialogue between the Ombudsman and the health authorities, and in the autumn of 2013, the result became that all Danish maternity wards now have precise instructions on how to care for the child in the time it is alive. Nothing can change the fact that this is a grievous situation, and it can be unbearable just to contemplate that children die a few hours after they are born. But hardly anyone would dispute that the children shall have all the care, warmth and dignity they can get in their short lives. This has now been ensured, as indicated, following dialogue with the responsible health authorities (news item of 25 February 2014). This case did not garner much attention in the media either, and one may ask why that is. Was it for example because under the circumstances, the best solution had been found, and it had come about as a result of an exemplary cooperation between the Ombudsman and the authorities? Is the answer quite simply that cases involving conflict and strife provide an easier gateway to the media than cases where difficult issues find good solutions? Or was this also caused by the lack of a specific ‘story’? 15