ANNUAL REPORT OF 2019 ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SEIMAS OMBUDSMEN’S OFFICE OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA Those who are interested in the activities of the Seimas Ombudsmen’s Office may naturally wonder why, when reviewing activities of this institution in 2019, the emphasis is placed on the human dignity and one of its essential conditions – ensuring social and economic rights. In response, it has to be admitted that the proper implementation of these rights remains a major challenge for the State, and neglecting them can have negative consequences, particularly for the most socially sensitive and most vulnerable members of society: the elderly, the disabled, etc. Accordingly, the Seimas Ombudsmen, who are primarily perceived as the defenders of human rights – the intermediaries between the individual and public authorities – must help ensure that the public authorities do not violate the individual’s rights and freedoms in the areas of social and economic life and that the State identifies as one of its most important missions the proper allocation of the available resources to all members of society. According to the constitutional principle of the separation of powers, each institution exercising the state power has a role to play in ensuring social and economic rights. While in the framework of public authorities the Seimas Ombudsmen’s Office is not classified as a legislative or executive body, according to its mandate in the field of protection of human rights and freedoms – dealing with complaints from individuals, initiating investigations into the fundamental violations of human rights and freedoms, preventing torture, monitoring human rights throughout the life of this institution since 1995 and thus in 2019, attempted and is attempting to draw attention to the respect for human dignity, the proper exercise of economic and social rights and aims at preventing violations of law and ensuring that personal dignity is respected in the future. Poverty and social exclusion are one of the most urgent issues in the country, making the overcoming of poverty one of the most pressing areas of human rights’ protection. One of the preconditions for the individual to become a full member of civil society, to exercise freely and actively political and EVERYONE COUNTS 5 civil rights is to free himself from poverty. One of the manifestations of poverty which should be mentioned here is homelessness. In order to find out the extent of this problem in Lithuania, in 2019, the Seimas Ombudsmen analyzed the country’s strategic documents, and studied thoroughly the documents regulating the allocation of resources to address the problem of homelessness. On the basis of this analysis, in 2020, the Seimas Ombudsmen will initiate the study to reveal the problems of providing social housing for low-income individuals and individuals incapable of independently finding housing. In the exercise of the functions of national prevention of torture, the Seimas Ombudsmen regularly visit various places of detention, including care homes and mental institutions, and monitor how they ensure human rights, and as the national human rights institution, the Seimas Ombudsmen carry out the monitoring of human rights, initiate investigations into the fundamental human rights problems. In 2019, one of the most important works carried out by the Seimas Ombudsmen was the investigation2 which revealed violations of human rights related, inter alia, to the lack of knowledge of employees of care homes about the effective ensuring of human rights, as well as the investigation3 during which the effectiveness of the process of reviewing court decisions following which persons were declared to be legally incapacitated in the country was analysed. The importance of ensuring social and economic rights was also discussed at the Nordic-Baltic 2 Report on access of employees in adult social care institutions (social employees, nurses and their assistants) to vocational training and professional competence improvement in human rights issues, 30 September 2019, No PRJ2018/1-3. 3 Investigation into the fundamental human rights problems concerning decisions following which persons, before 1 January 2016, were declared to be legally incapacitated and possibly unjustified restriction of such persons’ rights, No NJTI-2018/1-1, 10 December 2019.