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According to Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Renatas Norkus, Lithuania will encourage the governments of the OSCE participating states to take more pro-active measures to ensure the safety journalists and to put more effort into investigating cases of violence against journalists, and will emphasize the importance of media self-regulation.  

Ambassador R.Norkus said this at the OSCE Review Conference on 4 October in Warsaw. During the Review Conference, Lithuania’s permanent representative acquainted the participants with   human dimension priority trends of Lithuania’s OSCE chairmanship.

“The OSCE countries should pay attention to the impact of a rapidly developing new internet media and technology on the media freedom and pluralism. They should also not restrict freedom of expression on the internet by passing new laws to deal with the challenges that are arising due to new technology,” Ambassador R.Norkus said.

He stressed that Lithuania would also seek to draw the attention of the OSCE participating states to the topic of the safety of journalists.  In this endeavour, Lithuania intends to closely cooperate with OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic.

Lithuania’s upcoming OSCE chairmanship also intends to emphasize the importance of independent human rights institutions for strengthening democracy. Today, many countries already have offices of the ombudsman or national human rights commissions. However, according to Ambassador R. Norkus, it is necessary to ensure that these institutions would operate effectively, be politically independent and would work with civil society more actively, and that they would submit recommendations for the improvement of human rights policy.

As a follow-up to the achievements of Kazakhstan’s current OSCE chairmanship in the field of tolerance and non-discrimination, and benefiting from the positive cooperation experience with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in implementing the programmes of education on tolerance, in 2011 Lithuania will suggest that the OSCE participating states should pay greater attention to tolerance education as a means to prevent hate crimes.

The OSCE Review Conference was attended by the delegations of the OSCE participating states, representatives from the OSCE institutions and missions, and from non-governmental organizations. The following representatives from Lithuania’s non-governmental organizations took part in the event: Director of the Lithuanian Human Rights Monitoring Institute Henrikas Mickevičius, Professor of Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Director of Vilnius Yiddish Institute Šarūnas Liekis, and Adam Blaškevič, Principal of the Pope John Paul II Polish Gymnasium in Vilnius.

At the Review Conference, representatives from Lithuania’s non-governmental organizations evaluated Lithuania’s progress in implementing the OSCE commitments to human rights and democracy, the rule of law, tolerance and non-discrimination, and discussed the situation of national minorities in Lithuania. At Lithuania’s Embassy in Poland, representatives viewed an exhibition dedicated to Lithuania’s national minorities.

The Review Conference takes a look at the progress that the 56 OSCE participating states have made in implementing their commitments to human rights and democracy, democratic elections, the rule of law, tolerance and non-discrimination, freedom of the media, etc.

The Review Conference aims to prepare for the first in eleven years OSCE Summit that will take place on 1-2 December in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

With several hundred participants from governments, civil society and international organizations, the Review Conference in Warsaw is Europe’s largest human rights event in 2010.

For more information about the Review Conference please click here.