SECOND TRAINING SESSION AT THE FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND INFORMATICS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BIALYSTOK IN VILNIUS ON SPELLING OF NAMES.

After the success of the first training session on the 22nd of November 2017, a second training session was held at the Faculty of Economics and Informatics of the University of Bialystok in Vilnius on the 25^th of January 2018. This time, the training was conducted by the European Foundation of Human Rights (EFHR) lawyer Leszek Jankowski and the EVS volunteer Carmen Cara Lorente. Once again, many students attended to the event and showed a participatory and dynamic attitude towards the session.

Before the training session, the lawyer of the EFHR had the chance to have a meeting with the Dean of the University of Bialystok branch in Vilnius, where the main challenges of the Foundation were introduced to her as well as one of the most recent projects of the EFHR, the initiative “Minority SafePack”. In the meeting they agreed that the University of Bialystok will be actively engaged with the aforementioned initiative. Therefore, during the first week of March, the University will provide information on European Union (EU) Citizen Initiatives under the perspective of EU Law as well as encouraging their students to sign this petition. The EFHR will also hold sessions for a better understanding of students of what the EU citizen initiative is.

The topic of this second training was the spelling rules of names and surnames in Lithuanian passports. Firstly, Carmen Cara Lorente gave a short introduction about the EFHR and the initiative of “Minority SafePack”. After this brief intervention, Leszek Jankowski detailed the main legal topic of the spelling rules of names and surnames in Lithuanian passports and the administrative and legal eventualities that can happen when these names have special letters or characters that the Lithuanian alphabet does not have. He also detailed the legal cases that the EFHR won in these regards and where people ought to seek help.

Finally, questions were given by the audience, who engaged enthusiastically with the topic of original name spelling and other Human Rights issues.

The EFHR has organized a number of training sessions where experts discuss areas of law share their experiences and research with participants. Details about previous training sessions can be found here.

Everyone interested in the free trainings carried out by EFHR at the workplace or in educational institutions are welcome to contact us (mokymai@efhr.eu)  (+370 691 50 822).

The EFHR thanks the Faculty of Economics and Informatics of the University of Bialystok in Vilnius for the highly enjoyable opportunity to speak to its students.