Human rights advocacy faces serious challenges in Lithuania. Civil society often lacks knowledge and tools for effective representation of vulnerable groups. The project aims to develop women’s and human rights NGOs’ advocacy skills and competences. It seeks to strengthen civil society’s influence on legislative and political initiatives in order to improve the quality of democracy. Launched in autumn 2013, the project aims to strengthen the interactively based gender equality discourse and advocacy competences on women’s human rights issues.

One of the core activities of the project is preparing and presenting an alternative report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This will be partially guided by the results of four regional focus groups. Awareness raising campaigns and advocacy events will be organised throughout the project, promoting non-discrimination and CEDAW recommendations as an advocacy tool. The donor project partner KUN Center for Gender Equality (Norway) will contribute its know-how and many years of experience in the field of women’s rights. It will assist in organising and take part in the Norwegian-Baltic NGO forum in Vilnius. The main beneficiaries of the project will be representatives of the civil society, politicians, women, media and public at large. The project will deepen NGOs’ knowledge on non-discrimination, human rights, including the interactions between different aspects of identity, and strengthen NGOs’ practical capacities in advocacy on women’s rights. It will also take measures to shape public discourse based on women’s empowerment and respect for diversity, strengthen civil society influence on legislative and policy initiatives and develop bilateral partnerships.

The following activities are foreseen to achieve the objectives:

• Focus groups of women and other human rights NGOs in the regions to hear the voices of regional NGOs in order to clarify the challenges faced by women and to use their experiences as a basis for the CEDAW Alternative Report.
• Preparation and presentation of an alternative CEDAW report to the Committee in Geneva. The report looks at the situation of women by assessing how gender interacts with other aspects of identity (age, sexual orientation, health, ethnicity, etc.).
• Development and presentation of advocacy tools for regional women’s NGOs based on the CEDAW Committee’s conclusions. The Committee’s recommendations will be translated into Lithuanian and adapted for advocacy purposes in the run-up to the local elections. In order to reinforce the relevance of this tool, the CEDAW Committee’s insights will be complemented by data from the EU Gender Equality Index.
• Awareness-raising campaigns to draw attention to violations of women’s rights and discrimination. They emphasise that women are not a homogeneous group and that additional aspects of identity (sexual orientation, experience as a migrant or ethnic minority, age, marital status, etc.) exacerbate social exclusion. Regional media will be involved in order to increase visibility in the regions.
• Roundtable discussions/advocacy events in the regions are carried out using the CEDAW Committee’s recommendations for Lithuania and data from the Gender Equality Index.
• As part of the development of the bilateral partnership, an NGO forum was organised to establish professional contacts, exchange experiences, discuss the challenges of gender equality policy implementation in the post-crisis period, the opportunities and obstacles to the integration of a synergistic approach to gender equality in the workplace, the advocacy orientations, strategies and tools, as well as to get acquainted with good practices.

Project staff:

Vilana Pilinkaitė Sotirovič, NGO expert Augustas Čičelis, expert on project dissemination Margarita Jankauskaitė, Expert on project content Laima Vaigė, Legal Expert Jolanta Samuolytė, Legal Expert Giedrė Vaičėnienė, Project financier