Human Rights Monitoring Institute

Today Human Rights Monitoring Institute (HRMI) and Lithuanian Centre of Journalism has hosted a discussion with journalists. 
 
The third in the series of discussions with Lithuanian journalists  has been moderated by Kestutis Cilinskas, Member of Parliament and former Chair of HRMI Board. Aim of the discussion was to clarify whether human rights are adequately integrated into Lithuanian legislative procedure.

The drawbacks of the current legislative drafting in Parliament as concluded by participants may be summarized as follows:

• Poor quality of a number of previously passed statues resulted in a backlog of legislation waiting to be amended;

• Preparation of legislation is dominated by the ruling majority often pursuing its own rather public interests; 

• Legal analysis of draft legislation is often performed by lawyers unfamiliar with the basic human rights principles. As a result, generally the Legal Department of the Parliament doesn't evaluate conformity of drafts with the human rights standards. Moreover, the Department is not an independent institution;

• The practice of delegating the drafting of legislation to the executive results in even less concern for human rights; 

The Parliament plans to consider the Act on the Principles of Legislative Procedure. In K. Cilinskas opinion in order to protection of human rights, as a minimum, the Act should include the following principles:

• Representatives of the executive cannot be in majority membership in the working groups drafting legal acts;

• No governments representatives potentially responsible for the implementation of the drafted legal act should be members of such groups;

• Judges cannot participate in the drafting process;

• An independent institution which is well-versed in human rights standards should evaluate drafts on their compliance with the human rights law;

The discussion was organized within the programme supported by the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs.