The brochure summarizes the accumulated experience and the good practices of the ombudsman type institutions on local level that have functioned under pilot projects in the period 1998 – 2003. It also presents the first steps in the process of establishing such institutions after their legislative regulation, namely the adoption in 2003 of Article 21a of the Law on Local Self-Government and Local Administration, which entitles municipal councils to elect local public mediators for promoting and protecting the civil rights and lawful interests of citizens before the local authorities.