On February 7th, 2017 a meeting in preparation for the upcoming „Rainbow Days“ 2017 festival, organized by the National LGBT* rights organization LGL, was held at the Swedish Embassy in Vilnius. During the meeting the representatives of LGL, other nongovernmental organizations and foreign embassies discussed the possible cooperation in organizing the upcoming „Rainbow Days“ 2017
News / Human Rights
Russia is a state from which one can learn “many great things”, claims Rima Baškienė, the First Deputy Speaker of Seimas. “We create a bugaboo: Russia is evil. Not at all. There are many great things in Russia that we should be learning from. It is unfair to say that everything is bad in Russia
In January, 2017 the project “Rainbow Rights – Promoting LGBTI Equality in Europe” has started. The project is carried out by the Ministry of Justice of Finland in partnership with Ministry of Social Affairs and Health of Finland, the national umbrella NGO “Seta – LGBTI Rights in Finland”, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional
On January 27th national LGBT rights organization LGL invited representatives from other non-governmental organizations to the discussion “HATE NO MORE: the circumstance of the under-reporting of the hate crimes in Lithuania”. During the meeting NGOs addressed one of the biggest challenges – the latency of hate crimes, the number of reports of the hate motivated
Controversial statements by the Lithuanian MP Agnė Širinskienė, Chair of the Committee on Health Affairs of Seimas and the member of the Lithuanian Peasant and Greens Union Party, are being debated in the Council of Europe. Being familiar with the MP’s claims that „homosexuality is not an innate trait, but a decision to perform homosexual
The Office of Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson and the National Equality and Diversity Forum are organizing the fourth annual National Equality and Diversity Awards. The Awards will honor persons, organizations, projects and initiatives which contributed to the promotion and advancement of equality and diversity in Lithuania in 2016. We invite everyone to present nominations for all
In the course of four years only a very slight change in Lithuanian citizens’ attitude towards the introduction of same-sex civil partnership in Lithuania was recorded by a public poll commissioned by the Lithuanian Chamber of Notaries. According to the poll, only 11 % of Lithuanians support the introduction of same-sex civil partnership in Lithuania,
On January 9th, 2016 homophobic rhetoric was aired on Lithuania’s national television “LRT”. During a TV show “Good Morning, Lithuania” a journalist inquired people on the streets of Vilnius about their view on Eurovision song contest. One interviewee declared that it is “a meeting of European pederasts”. Although the reportage has been edited, the expression
A Kurdish advocacy organization has launched an LGBT-inclusive human rights campaign. The Rasan Organization on Nov. 25 began to paint murals on the walls of three high schools in Sulaymaniyah, a city in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Staffers and volunteers of the Sulaymaniyah-based organization painted the murals with the help of a
The Vilnius City District Court will have to rule on absent legal gender recognition procedure in Lithuania. On December 22nd, 2016 two transgender men – T.K. and M.V. – lodged a legal complaint with the view of obtaining legal gender recognition without undergoing the compulsory gender reassignment surgery. The newly appointed Government is skeptical about
Denmark on Sunday became the first country in the world to officially remove transgender identities from its list of mental health disorders. The decision, supported by all parties in the Danish Parliament, was originally made back in May 2016 following a lack of progress from the World Health Organization. “This very encouraging move from Denmark
Almost 700 LGBTI human rights defenders and allies from 101 different countries have recently gathered in Bangkok, Thailand to take part in the 28th ILGA World Conference. For five days, advocates from all over the world met to network and engage in dialogue on issues faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex communities both