On 30 September 2023, The Human Rights Monitoring Institute celebrated its 20th anniversary. Henrikas Mickevičius, one of the founders of the HRMI, a lawyer, an expert in European Union law and human rights, and a former member of the United Nations Working Group on Abductions and Enforced Disappearances, explains how the Institute was born, what its goals were and what the first year of its activities looked like.
– Can you tell us about the beginning of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute?
– The Institute was registered on 30 September 2003, but a lot of preparation had been done before then. In June 2003, I returned to Lithuania from abroad, where I had been living and working, and started working on the concept of a new human rights NGO: defining the Institute’s mission, vision and strategy. It was a very important and dynamic time: Lithuania was seeking to establish itself in the international community – already as a member of the United Nations and the Council of Europe, as a member of the European Union and NATO, and to this end it was working intensively on its legislation and joining international treaties, including those in the field of human rights. It was evident that the practical implementation of the international human rights commitments adopted was weak, and at times there was even the impression that the content of the commitments adopted was either incomprehensible, or that they were treated as formalities on the way to the achievement of larger goals, such as membership of the European Union. We believed that the organisation could contribute to the implementation of the human rights standards that had already come to Lithuania and those that were to come, and at the same time contribute to the strengthening of Lithuania’s statehood, because the effective implementation of human rights was obviously supposed to speed up Lithuania’s integration into the Western political and cultural space and, at the same time, to strengthen the Lithuanian statehood. We also saw human rights as a particularly important instrument for improving the quality of Lithuanian democracy, which we perceived as quite fragile. We believed that the relationship between democracy and human rights is symbiotic and that human rights are primary in that relationship. I would like to quote what we wrote in our first human rights review: “Democracy and human rights are inseparable and complementary concepts. The better human rights are guaranteed in a state, the more mature and robust the democracy. On the other hand, the more democratic a state is, the more it cares about human rights.” This understanding has been the leitmotif of our work, at least for the first 10 years, and it explains our focus on political and civil rights.
In terms of the vision of the Institute, we thought it should be an independent expert institution, one that could be a partner and constructive critic in dealing with national and international institutions. At the same time, we saw a newly emerging NGO as an activist group that would use its expertise to raise awareness and awareness of human rights among the public and political elites. In developing our operational strategy, we have identified three priorities: the right to a fair trial, in the broadest sense, covering the whole of criminal, civil and administrative justice, the work of bailiffs, police, prosecutors and lawyers, and the organisational aspect of the courts and the institutions. The second rather broadly defined strand was the right to respect for private life, as there was little knowledge of this right, low awareness of its importance and the dangers of its violation, and a lack of debate on initiatives that restrict privacy and on the proliferation of privacy violations. The third strand was also broadly formulated: the fight against hatred, discrimination and the protection of the rights of people belonging to vulnerable groups. These were the areas in which the Institute planned to work most intensively, using all possible forms of work: monitoring, collecting information, analysing it, preparing studies and reports, publicising them, presenting them to the authorities, organising debates and press conferences, etc. But we also imagined ourselves as a centre of expertise, which usually has a clear position and speaks out on all political and civil rights issues. Soon after the Institute’s establishment, opinion-forming and publicising our position through media channels became our almost daily work.
– What were the biggest challenges in the first years of the Institute?
– The country was still young and human rights were not considered to be something important, or sometimes they were just a politically correct phrase. Human rights are not reflected in political documents, party and government programmes. It was only a few years later, when we analysed the pre-election programmes of political parties, that we found the first attempts to make commitments on human rights. Often those commitments were minimal, but it was a good start. The first challenge was therefore to bring the concept of human rights into the public sphere, to convince political actors, political elites, opinion leaders and decision makers to bring the protection and further development of human rights into the public debate, political rhetoric and the political agenda. To achieve these goals, on 10 December we started celebrating International Human Rights Day, which evolved into Human Rights Week and then Human Rights Month with a wide range of events. We also established the annual “Human Rights Herald” award, organised on a week against racial and ethnic discrimination in March, and so on. At the time, we were seen by some as oddballs, outlaws seeking popularity, or even “vermin” with hidden agendas, but we ignored this and continued to work consistently for human rights.
– Looking from the present to the past, what have been the major achievements of HRMI in its twenty years of activity?
– I think that a lot has been done in twenty years; I would dare to say that we were one of those who set the human rights movement in Lithuania in motion. Today, we can see obvious changes: it has become common to discuss human rights issues in public, human rights are quite prominent in political life, and the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania and the government and law enforcement institutions pay considerable attention to the protection of human rights. As far as specific initiatives are concerned, it is impossible to list them all, but I would like to mention that one of our first major and ongoing projects was the publication of the “Human Rights Review”. These reviews have contributed significantly to positive developments and have become a kind of calling card for the Human Rights Monitoring Institute. Actually, our idea was only to initiate the tradition of preparing such reviews, i.e. to publish the review ourselves for a few years, and then to transfer this function to the national human rights institution, which we also initiated. Unfortunately, this idea has not been fully implemented: it is my deep conviction that the Seimas Ombudsmen’s Office for Human Rights cannot be regarded as a national human rights institution, either by its formation or by the principles of its operation.
Photo from the HRMI archive.
It is also necessary to mention an important part of our work: the development of strategic litigation. One of the first precedent-setting cases involved a Romani person who wanted to work in a café. She was told that the position was already filled, but after applying the testing technique, i.e. when a non-Romani person was sent to the same café to try to get a job, it turned out that the job was still vacant. In addition, at our request, a bailiff recorded the fact that the workplace was vacant. The Court found that there was sufficient evidence that the person had been discriminated against in the labour market on the grounds of nationality, the case was won and the victim was awarded financial compensation. It was the first of its kind – I am still proud of that case, it was really important.
The other case of note, or rather all three cases, concerns the rapporteur Dalia Budrevičienė. You may remember the well-publicised case when an employee of Krekenava agricultural company raised the issue of “envelope” salaries in front of the owner of the company, was dismissed from her job and accused of defamation. HRMI obtained Dalia Budrevičienė’s acquittal and, in addition, she was awarded a sum of money from her former employers to compensate her for the damages. Incidentally, Dalia Budrevičienė was named the first Human Rights Herald for her principled and courageous actions.
We should also mention the famous “L. v. Lithuania” case. The law on gender reassignment in Lithuania was ready but “put in a drawer”, so we took L. directly to the European Court of Human Rights. The statement was adopted without exhausting the available domestic remedies, as required, because we proved that they simply do not exist in Lithuania – this part of the case alone is precedent-setting. During the trial, for the first and possibly only time to my knowledge, the case against Lithuania was heard in oral proceedings. Finally, the ruling itself was also unprecedented – the European Court of Human Rights ordered Lithuania to adopt a specific law.
I would also like to recall that we were among the first to resist the attempts of forces promoting extreme ideology to dominate, if not usurp, the commemoration of 11 March. The culmination of our efforts can be described as the organisation of a counter-march against the fascist, nationalist procession that has become traditional in Vilnius Gediminas Avenue, in which “Lithuania for Lithuanians”, etc., were shouted. Thanks to our efforts and the efforts of other NGOs, this important national holiday has been restored to all Lithuanian people.
– How do you assess the current human rights situation in Lithuania?
Globally, we look pretty good. Of course, compared to the Western world, we could look better, although human rights problems are inevitable there too. In recent years, we have seen that even old, well-established democracies can converge in strange ways with authoritarian rule and intolerance of dissent and other human rights abuses. In the context of the European Union, I would think that the situation here is certainly better than in Hungary or Poland, for example. I would say that in terms of human rights we are somewhere between Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria on the one hand, and the Scandinavian countries on the other hand, but perhaps we are closer to the Scandinavian countries these days – at the moment, in Lithuania, human rights – both political and civil rights – are quite well protected.
Finally, I would like to add that the Human Rights Monitoring Institute has so far worked mainly in the area of political and civil rights, but due to time and capacity constraints, we have focused less on social and economic rights. Today, I think that human rights defenders in Lithuania should focus more on the protection of social and economic rights. These rights are crucial: their absence leads to economic and social differentiation and inequality, poverty and exclusion, undermines social cohesion, erodes the democratic way of life and, ultimately, the democratic order, because political and civil rights are often only actively enjoyed and democratic processes are only carried out by those who are guaranteed fundamental social and economic rights. I see worrying signs that economic and social inequality in Lithuania is increasing: while the economically successful part of the Lithuanian population is feverishly buying up real estate, those who have “missed the train” are standing in ever longer queues at the Food Bank. And it’s not just pensioners, as is often assumed. Unfortunately, these problems are still not visible as issues in the human rights discourse, but they really should be.
