Lithuania offers human rights recommendations to Ethiopia and Nicaragua
The Permanent Representative of Lithuania Ambassador Andrius Krivas took the floor at the 33rd session of the Working Group of the Universal Periodic Review, which is being held in Geneva on 6 – 17 May 2019.
Lithuania welcomed Ethiopia’s steps to improve its human rights environment and recommended Ethiopia to ratify the remaining core international human rights treaties, to ensure safe and enabling environment for civil society, human rights defenders and journalists, to outlaw all forms of gender-based violence and discrimination and to conduct awareness raising and educational campaigns.
Echoing the concern of the international community about the human rights situation in Nicaragua, Lithuania recommended Nicaragua to guarantee the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, to refrain from using excessive force against protesters and to ensure that those responsible for human rights violations are held to account. Furthermore, Lithuania offered recommendations to protect the freedom of media and expression, to ensure safety of journalists and accountability for violence and attacks against them and to release all arbitrarily detained political opponents and critics.
The UPR is a human rights mechanism employed since 2008. The UPR assesses the human rights situation in each individual country and provides recommendations for improvements. At the end of each UPR cycle, UN Members produce reports about the implementation of the adopted recommendations and overall progress in the area of human rights. Countries undergo the UPR every five years. Lithuania had its first review in 2011. In 2017, its second-cycle UPR report got adopted.
