Report on the Year 2013 by the Ombudsman of the Republic of Latvia Riga, 2014 Contents Contents ......................................................................................................................... 2 Abbreviations Used in the Text ...................................................................................... 6 Preamble by the Ombudsman ........................................................................................ 7 I Children’s Rights ......................................................................................................... 8 1. Children’s Rights to Education ........................................................................................................ 8 1.1. Rights to Acquire Education Free of Charge............................................................................ 8 1.2. Rights and Possibilities to Acquire Education in Compliance with Child’s Capacities ......... 12 2. Importance of Individual Preventive Work in the Protection of the Children’s Rights .................. 17 3. Children’s Rights to Health Care Free of Charge .......................................................................... 22 4. Children’s Right to be Listened and Respecting of Their Opinion ................................................ 26 5. Rights of Orphans and Children without Parental Custody ........................................................... 29 5.1. Children’s rights to live in family or familial environment .................................................... 29 5.2. Ensuring the children’s rights to extra-familial care and supervision of guardians................ 33 5.3. Support to guardians and foster families ................................................................................ 40 6. Topicalities of the Division of the Children’s Rights ..................................................................... 49 6.1. Statistics and general overview .............................................................................................. 49 6.2. Children’s rights to privacy and video surveillance ............................................................... 54 6.3. Children’s rights to privacy and responsibility of journalists ................................................. 55 6.4. Children’s rights to State-funded protection in criminal proceedings .................................... 57 6.5. Solving parental disputes related to application of tax reliefs ................................................ 59 6.6. Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in the field of children’s rights ............... 60 II Civil and Political Rights ......................................................................................... 62 1. Ensuring the Rights of Persons with Mental Disorders ................................................................. 62 1.1. Report on systematic defects in State social care centres ....................................................... 62 1.2. Problems in Implementation of the Law on Social Services and Social Assistance .............. 66 1.3. Improvement of legislation in psychiatry ............................................................................... 70 1.4. Compliance with human rights in psycho-neurological hospitals .......................................... 71 1.5. New regulation on incapacitation ........................................................................................... 71 2. Efficiency of Protection of Private Life ......................................................................................... 72 2.1. Representation of personal names .......................................................................................... 72 2.2. Improvement of legislation related to video surveillance ...................................................... 74 3. Protection of the Rights of Prisoners in Closed-Type Institutions ................................................. 75 3.1. Life conditions ....................................................................................................................... 75 2 3.2. Infringement of the principle of good administration ............................................................ 77 3.3. Elaboration of plan for individual risk assessment and resocialization of prisoners .............. 78 3.4. Short meetings ....................................................................................................................... 81 3.5. Problems related to persons sentenced to life imprisonment ................................................. 82 3.6. Video surveillance in cells of the Daugavgriva prison ........................................................... 83 3.7. Violence, self-regulation and suicide of prisoners in detention facilities ............................... 84 3.8. Availability of the court to prisoners ...................................................................................... 85 3.9. Information availability.......................................................................................................... 86 3.10. Health care of prisoners ....................................................................................................... 87 4. Guarantees of Protection of the Rights of Persons in Contact with the Police .............................. 89 5. Supervision of Pretrial Criminal Proceedings ................................................................................ 90 6. Rights to Freedom.......................................................................................................................... 92 7. Extradition of a Person to a Foreign State ..................................................................................... 94 8. Legal Status and Protection of Detained Foreigners and Asylum Seekers .................................... 95 8.1. Integration and social protection ............................................................................................ 95 8.2. Supervision of Procedure on Force Return of Foreigners ...................................................... 97 8.3. Health care in the center “Mucenieki” for asylum seekers .................................................... 99 9. Rights of Foreigners .................................................................................................................... 100 10. Rights to a Fair Trial .................................................................................................................. 103 10.1. Availability of the Court ..................................................................................................... 104 10.2. Rights to justice in relation to penalty reform .................................................................... 106 10.3. Rights to case adjudication within in reasonable time limits ............................................. 108 10.4. Non-appointment of court hearing ..................................................................................... 110 10.5. Extension of elaboration term of full text version of the court decision ............................ 111 10.6. Rights to be informed about court hearing and made decisions ......................................... 113 10.7. Opinions of the Ombudsman submitted to the Constitutional Court ................................. 113 11. Freedom of Assembly and Association ...................................................................................... 118 11.1. Prohibition to border guards to organize labor unions ....................................................... 118 11.2. Freedom of assembly ......................................................................................................... 119 12. Voting Rights ............................................................................................................................. 120 12.1. Supervision of municipal elections .................................................................................... 120 12.2. Rights of prisoners to participate in municipal elections ................................................... 121 13. Topicalities of Human Trafficking ............................................................................................. 122 13.1. Priorities for 2014 .............................................................................................................. 124 III Social, Economic and Cultural Rights .................................................................. 125 1. Rights to Social Security.............................................................................................................. 125 3 1.1. Compliance with the human rights principles in the social insurance system ..................... 125 1.2. Controversial amendments to the Law on State Pensions .................................................... 127 1.3. Deficiencies in application of regulations related to social assistance ................................. 128 2. Rights to Housing ........................................................................................................................ 130 2.1. Admission to possession of real property ............................................................................. 130 2.2. Municipal assistance in housing issues ................................................................................ 132 2.3. Problematic issues in management of apartment houses ..................................................... 138