2012 at the Ombudsman Institution on the basis of newspaper articles. Among other things, the articles suggested that babies born alive had been left to die alone in hospital sluice rooms. After a dialogue with the health authorities, the authorities took the initiative to issue more precise guidelines for maternity wards’ procedure in these sad cases. 4. International collaboration The Ombudsman is heavily involved in international collaboration. This continued in 2012, for it is important to share the experiences from an Ombudsman institution which we have had in Denmark, and we ourselves learn a great deal from it. Help to establish and run Ombudsman institutions in other countries is also an important part of the overall Danish aid towards democracy building around the world. In 2012, we among other things continued our long-standing collaboration with and support for the Albanian Ombudsman institution, which is working in difficult conditions. We also worked closely with Ombudsman institutions in Uganda and Tanzania, and in December we visited Burkina Faso, where we entered into a formal collaboration agreement with the country’s Ombudsman institution. In addition, we had close contacts with Chinese state authorities, which culminated in a visit to China in June 2013, when we entered into important collaboration agreements with state authorities such as the Ministry of Supervision and the State Bureau of Letters and Calls. 5. The Ombudsman – critical and constructive Of course, much more happened in the Ombudsman institution in 2012 than we have space to describe in this article. Major projects include the establishment of our new Children’s Division and a fundamental reform – both organisationally and with regard to methods – of our monitoring of institutions for people on the outer edges of society, such as prisons and psychiatric institutions. The establishment of the Children’s Division and issues relating to our monitoring activities are described separately in other articles in the Annual Report. The Ombudsman’s key task is to help citizens with their problems in relation to the administration, and our image of the authorities can easily become dominated by the major and minor errors committed. It is therefore important to 17