Lithuanian Disability Forum

We are the biggest platform of organizations in Lithuania representing people with disabilities and their families. At the moment it has 14 national member organisations representing about 300 000 Lithuanian people with disabilities and their families. We are member organisation of European Disability Forum which unites most of disability umbrellas and international disability organizations, and is major advocacy organisation for disability issues at EU level.

OUR AIMS 

• to advocate human and civil rights of Lithuanian people with various disabilities,
• to participate in forming social policy and improving situation of people with disabilities
• realizing equal rights of Lithuanian people with disabilities.

WHAT WE DO

• promote disability in the governmental and local policy,
• influence process of adopting positively set legislation for people with disabilities,
• promote policy which protects rights of people with disabilities,
• cooperate with different agencies on national and EU level.

CONVENTION

In ten recent years major part of Lithuanian Disability forum (hereinafter LDF) work is related to UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD). LDF is exclusively interested in and sequentially oversees how the government is implementing its obligations, as well as actively participate in forming and/or reforming disability policy in conformity with CRPD.

EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW and SUPPORTED DECISION MAKING

LDF has been advocating for about a decade, striving for reform of legal capacity regulation and implementation of supported decision making. Since 2012 LDF is participating in working group drafting laws on changing provisions on legal capacity in Civil Code and Code of civil procedure to comply with CRPD requirements. New regulation came into force in 2016.

In 2016 LDF has been contracted by the Ministry of Social security and labour to provide trainings for social workers on the national level introducing new paradigm shift established within CRPD on equality before the law and new requirements on realisation of all the fundamental human rights by all persons with disabilities and introducing supported decision making model instead of substituted decision making.