BackOn 16 April, upon the nomination of the Speaker, the Seimas (Parliament) appointed Augustinas Normantas to investigate activities of officials of state institutions and agencies instead of investigation of activities of officials of municipal institutions and agencies that he has been responsible for since 2005.
On 23 April the Seimas appointed Raimondas Šukys, a former parliamentarian, minister of the interior and health, to the position of the Seimas Ombudsman. He was nominated by the Speaker of the Seimas. Mr Šukys was appointed to investigate activities of officials of municipal institutions and agencies. On 25 April, a newly appointed Seimas Ombudsman swore an oath in the Parliament. On the same day, at the secret ballot the Seimas Ombudsman Dr. Augustinas Normantas was appointed to the position of the head of the Seimas Ombudsmen’s Office.
Dr. Augustinas Normantas has been working as the Seimas Ombudsman for the second term and before that he had been a judge of the Constitutional Court for 9 years and the Deputy Chairman of the Chief Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania. Moreover, Dr. Augustinas Normantas has almost 40 years of experience in scientific pedagogical work at the Law Faculty of Vilnius University. Dr. A.Normantas replaced the previous head of the Office Romas Valentukevičius, whose term of office ended in mid-February.
Following change of the Seimas Ombudsmen, the institution started to implement organisational-structural and activity-related changes, following which a new structure of the Office was approved: groups of Advisers to the Seimas Ombudsmen formed, distribution of areas of activities performed and a Human Rights Division as a separate administrative unit established. Arminas Lydeka, the former Chairman of the Seimas Committee on Human Rights, was appointed to the position of the head of the newly established Human Rights Division.
The Human Rights Division was formed on the basis of the Group monitoring human rights situation in closed detention institutions with an aim to implement the functions of the Seimas Ombudsmen, to perform monitoring and analysis of human rights and freedoms and seek to restore violated human rights as well as to prevent emergence of new offences. Equally important are the newly assigned functions: to carry out human rights promotion, education and collaboration at national and international level. Human Rights Division will also seek to co-operate more with non-governmental organizations and implement joint projects.
Another significant change is that the draft Law amending the Law on the Seimas Ombudsmen, which provides for additional functions of the Seimas Ombudsmen’s Office that are necessary to become a national human rights institution as well as national preventive mechanism, which would perform prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in closed detention institutions under the OPCAT, is submitted to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.
It should be noted that the Seimas Ombudsmen‘s Office carries out the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in closed detention institutions even now and also performs to a limited extent the functions attributable to a human rights institution; however, after the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania ratifies the Optional Protocol and approves the new wording of the Law on the Seimas Ombudsmen, it will be possible to implement these functions to the full extent.
Source : Seimas Ombudsmen's Office
