On December 10, Dr Skirmantas Bikelis, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Research Centre for Social Sciences (LCSS), participated in the discussion “What Is the Future of the International Human Rights Order?” at the 8th National Human Rights Forum (NHRF), held at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. It took place shortly after the announcement of the U.S. National Security Strategy, but before the attack on Venezuela. However, the question raised by the session remains relevant and is becoming ever more so. During the discussion, the focus was primarily on the disregard for international law in Ukraine and in Palestine, particularly in Gaza.

S. Bikelis expressed the view that the standards established by the Supreme Court of Lithuania (SCL) for the crime of genocide (in the Vasiliauskas and Drėlingas cases, where the defendants were found guilty of participation in the genocide of Lithuanian partisans) are very liberal – considerably more permissive than those applied by international criminal tribunals. Therefore, if individuals responsible for crimes in Gaza were to be tried in Lithuania, proving the body of genocide as it is understood in Lithuania would be relatively easy (bearing in mind the concept of the crime, rather than the practical circumstances and difficulties of gathering evidence). Moreover, the differences in scale between the total destruction of Gaza and the killings of partisans are quite evident. Evidence of genocidal intent is also abundant and is described in detail in the findings of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem), and Israel. By contrast, the existence of genocidal intent in the killings of Lithuanian partisans (as a group vital to the nation’s survival) is even more debatable.

In the context of Lithuania’s position, it is also important that on the eve of the Forum, in its ruling in the Paleckis case concerning the denial of genocide, the Supreme Court of Lithuania stated that “international crimes may be denied or trivialized not only through the use of explicit language, but also, inter alia, by means of omissions, by taking cover behind cautious wording or hypotheses that do not change the essence of such statements” (case No. 2K-173-1073/2025).

The discussion contained a great deal of pessimistic realism – we live in a world of crumbling forms. Nevertheless, our duty is to participate in the process properly and to stand firmly on the side of justice, regardless of the balance of power and the fragility of forms.

An analogous principle is required by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: according to the International Court of Justice (2007 judgment), the Convention obliges states to take action even when the actions of an individual state could not, by themselves, prevent genocide, because the desired result may be achieved through the combined actions of several states. *- At the Forum, the quotation was incorrectly attributed to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Recording of the discussion in Lithuanian.

Photos by the forum organizer.

Although children are currently recognised as full holders of human rights within both national and international legal systems, the effective implementation of children’s rights in practice continues to face significant challenges. Therefore, the primary aim of the monograph “Children’s Rights in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Analysis with a Spotlight on Lithuania”, prepared by the LCSS Law Institute, is to contribute to the improvement of child protection systems by providing evidence-based insights and recommendations.

In this book, researchers from the three Baltic States, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania examine various aspects of children’s rights as enshrined in constitutional, civil, administrative, labour, and criminal law across the Central and Eastern European region. The volume also addresses emerging twenty-first-century issues, including inclusive education for children with disabilities, the rights of children belonging to national minorities, and children’s rights to privacy and personal data protection, among others. The comparative analysis of the Lithuanian legal system and those of other countries applied in this monograph is particularly valuable for policymakers, practitioners, and the academic community, as it enables the identification of good practices and learning from the experiences of different countries. At the same time, the publication fills an important gap in the academic literature by focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, a region that has often been underrepresented and overlooked in global discussions on children’s rights.

The book, published in open access by the internationally recognized publisher Springer Nature, will be available to interested audiences worldwide without any financial obligations.

The open-access publication of this collective monograph was supported by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) through funding allocated to the LCSS Law Institute project “An Interdisciplinary Dialogue Among International Researchers on Children’s Rights: Publishing a Collective Monograph with a Foreign Publisher” (VAIKAI), Contract No. S-LISs-25-3.

The open-access book is available in English here.

As of 6 January 2026, the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LCSS) will be led by Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė, who was selected for the position of Deputy Director of the LCSS and Head of the Law Institute following a competitive selection process concluded at the end of 2025.

Dr Pūraitė-Andrikienė has been working as a researcher at the Lithuanian Law Institute, and subsequently at the LCSS Institute of Law, since 2018. Her main research interests include Lithuanian and comparative constitutional law, constitutional justice, human rights, legal protection of vulnerable groups, and European Union law. She has published more than 35 academic works (monographs, research studies, journal articles). A significant number of her publications has appeared in journals indexed in the Web of Science and/or Scopus databases and have been released by internationally recognized publishers. She has also served as the scientific editor of several collective volumes. In addition, Dovilė is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University and, since 2022, a member of the Young Academy of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. From 2023 to 2025, she served as a Science and Innovation Adviser of the Research Council of Lithuania at the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Lithuania. We warmly congratulate our colleague Dovilė and wish her every success and inspiration in leading the team of legal scholars, as well as in continuing and further developing the Institute’s research activities.

We also express our sincere gratitude to Dr Ingrida Mačernytė-Panomariovienė, who led the LCSS Institute of Law from early 2021. During her tenure, the Institute’s researchers actively conducted research, published articles in international journals, as well as book chapters and monographs with prestigious academic publishers, and participated in national and international projects. We wish Ingrida continued success in her academic pursuits, many inspiring ideas, and meaningful future research endeavours.

Dr Raimonda Bublienė, a postdoctoral fellow at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, participating in the postdoctoral project “Multiple Discrimination and Labour Income: A Comparative Analysis of Legal Regulations in European Countries” (MEDALIC), took part in the 15th international conference “Work and Non-Work, Today. Reframing the Issue through an Interdisciplinary Perspective”, organized in Bergamo (Italy) by ADAPT’s International School of Higher Education in Labour and Industrial Relations.

At the conference, Dr Bublienė delivered a presentation entitled “Labour Income and Dimension of Multiple Discrimination.” She introduced the research problematics and methodology of the ongoing MEDALIC project. Discussing the phenomenon of multiple discrimination, the researcher noted that individuals may simultaneously belong to several vulnerable groups and as a result experience specific forms of discrimination. For example, the intersection of gender and racial stereotypes can significantly disadvantage immigrant women.

According to the researcher, the main labour market issues resulting from such discrimination relate to access to employment and the legal regulation in European countries concerning equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women, which has a direct impact on labour income. Additional challenges arise from the fragmented anti-discrimination legal framework, inadequate judicial response, and the limited capacity of legal measures alone to address labour income inequalities. Therefore, she stressed the importance of examining how labour income and multiple discrimination manifest in employment relations within the context of EU anti-discrimination law and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, using statistical data based on gender, age, and other grounds of discrimination.

“The Journal of the University of Latvia. Law” has published an article by Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, titled “Impeachment Proceedings in Lithuania: Model, Problems of Implementation, and Possibilities of Improvement”.

The case law of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter – the Constitutional Court, the Court) concerning impeachment cases is exceptionally extensive. Nevertheless, according to the researcher, the problems related to the implementation of the Court’s recent conclusions in impeachment cases raise questions about the optimality of the legal regulation of the impeachment proceedings.

A significant part of the problems associated with the implementation of the Constitutional Court’s conclusions in impeachment cases arises from the fact that two institutions are involved in the impeachment proceedings in Lithuania: the Constitutional Court decides whether a person’s actions contradict (or do not contradict) the Constitution and whether these actions have violated the Constitution grossly, and the Seimas takes the final decision on whether to remove a person from office for actions that contradict the Constitution. In her article, the author discusses the need, preconditions, and possibilities for improving the legal regulation of the impeachment proceedings in Lithuania. Legislative amendments should be considered that might not completely solve the problems discussed, but would at least partially mitigate them.

The open-access article is available in English here.

The journal “Access to Justice in Eastern Europe” has published an article by Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, titled “Legal Capacity and Electoral Rights in Lithuania: The Issue of Compatibility between the Constitution and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

In her publication, the author draws attention to a persistent problem in Lithuania: persons with disabilities who have been declared legally incapacitated by a court cannot exercise their political rights–namely, the right to vote and to stand for election. In 2010, Lithuania ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (hereinafter – the Convention), whose Article 29 clearly states that all persons with disabilities have the right not only to vote but also to be elected. However, the implementation of this provision has been challenged by constitutional restrictions: the Lithuanian Constitution explicitly prohibits persons declared legally incapacitated from exercising electoral rights. Thus, it is evident that in order for Lithuania to meet international human rights standards and ensure equality for all persons, adjustments to the legal capacity requirement are necessary. According to Dr D. Pūraitė-Andrikienė, legislative reforms alone are insufficient to resolve this issue–constitutional amendments would be required.

The experience of other EU Member States that have successfully reformed their legal systems to align them with the Convention could serve as further encouragement for Lithuania to initiate discussions on amending the Constitution with regard to the legal capacity requirement.

The open-access article is available in English here.

Dr Kristina Ambrazevičiūtė, Researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, participated in the international conference “National Legal Systems and the EU Law: Reality and Future Challenges in a Comparative Perspective”, held at the University of Latvia on November 6–7.

In the session “Legal Issues of Equality and Gender,” the researcher delivered a presentation introducing the findings of the ongoing project “(Not)prolonging the working life of older women: legal environment, guarantees and intentions” (VAM), implemented at the Law Institute. The presentation focused on research results related to the situation of older women in the labour market.

Summarizing the responses of the Lithuanian and Latvian legal systems to the challenges faced by this group, Dr Ambrazevičiūtė highlighted the main features of these systems: in Lithuania, legal norms combine flexibility with stability – enabling older women to balance work and care, while the Latvian model focuses on job stability and protection, providing less flexibility but stronger employment security.

However, although both systems prohibit discrimination, neither addresses the combined effects of age, gender and care responsibilities. The researcher emphasized that while the Lithuanian and Latvian legal systems aim to ensure the continuity of older women’s employment, they still fail to resolve the key issue: formally guaranteed equality does not always translate into real opportunities. Until legal guarantees are accompanied by cultural and organizational changes, older women’s ability to remain in the labour market will remain more declarative than assured.

We are delighted that the Research Council of Lithuania, under its funded measure “Need-driven Research Projects”, has granted financial support to the project implemented by the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences – “Strengthening social relations in prisons: interplay and synergy between prisoners’ needs, effective measures and their implementation” (NARYS). The research team will carry out the project during the period from October 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026.

Scientific research has shown that maintaining social ties is an important factor that helps shape inmates’ behaviour and skills within correctional facilities and facilitates their reintegration into society. Therefore, the aim of the project’s researchers is to analyse and assess the practical implementation of measures for strengthening and restoring social ties in Lithuanian prisons. Based on the research findings, the project team will formulate recommendations proposing a model to ensure the quality and further development of these measures.

The research team of the project consists of: Dr Rūta Vaičiūnienė (project leader), PhD student Goda Dainauskaitė, Agata Katkonienė, and Aušra Maskaliovienė.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), Contract No. S-REP-25-7.

More information about the project here.

A new article by researchers from the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, titled “Hope of Release? Life Imprisonment in Lithuania,” has been published in the Baltic Journal of Law & Politics. In this article Dr Catherine Appleton, Dr Simonas Nikartas, and Goda Šleinotaitė examine the significant legislative amendments introduced in Lithuania in 2019, which allowed individuals serving life sentences to request a commutation to a fixed term of imprisonment ranging from five to 10 years, provided they had served a minimum of 20 years and met specific criteria assessed by the courts.

Having analysed 45 court decisions on commutation requests and eight research interviews with individuals serving life sentences, the researchers aim in their article to answer the question of whether the new commutation procedure offers a realistic hope of release. Although the legislation established the possibility for life-sentenced prisoners to seek commutation and to preserve hope of eventual release, the study revealed that in Lithuania such prisoners face numerous obstacles – harsh conditions and limited opportunities for meaningful engagement – which hinder their rehabilitation and preparation for release, making the prospect of release effectively unattainable for some.

The authors conclude that further reforms are necessary in order to genuinely achieve the goals of prisoner rehabilitation and the realization of human rights. This should include, for example, revising commutation criteria to prioritise rehabilitation progress over past offences, adapting the criteria for persons who have already served 20 years or more who were not required to meet the criteria at the beginning of their sentence, enhancing prison regimes and conditions to support meaningful rehabilitation from the outset of the sentence, and expanding opportunities for employment, education, and maintaining social ties and contact with the outside world.

This article represents an initial effort to explore the impact of the significant changes to Lithuania’s life sentence system.

The open-access article is available in English here.