reported widespread discrimination against LGBTI people. The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency reported that 47% of LGBTI people did not report physical or sexual attacks to the police out of fear of a homophobic and/or transphobic reaction. On 12 November, the Constitutional Court recognized the right of same-sex couples to parental leave.
STATELESSNESS Statelessness remained high, with 212,814 people having the status of “non-citizen” – a special category for citizens of the former USSR who have neither Latvian nor another citizenship – and 163 people with “stateless” status. Domestic law provisions for “noncitizens” continued to fall short of international standards, including a lack of political rights and some restrictions on employment and land ownership. Gaps remained for stateless migrants, including a lack of protection during the statelessness determination procedure, absence of a facilitated route to naturalization and few safeguards against arbitrary detention, with alternatives to detention applied only in a small proportion of cases.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS In Concluding Observations in March, the CEDAW Committee reiterated many concerns from its previous review in 2004, including calling on Latvia to adopt a comprehensive law on gender-based violence. Latvia again failed to ratify the Istanbul Convention, and 21 members of parliament lodged a case in the Constitutional Court challenging the Convention’s compliance with the Constitution.
RIGHT TO EDUCATION The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission noted in June that certain 2018 amendments to the law on education in minority languages failed to strike a fair balance between protection of the rights of minorities and promotion of the official state language.
Amnesty International Report 2020/21
LEBANON Lebanese Republic Head of state: Michel Aoun Head of government: Saad Hariri (replaced Hassan Diab in October, who replaced Mustapha Adib in September, who replaced Hassan Diab in August) The authorities continued to repress the protest movement that began in October 2019 through repeated summonses of activists to security and military institutions on charges of criminal defamation, as well as the use of excessive force against largely peaceful protesters, including with live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets. State officials rejected calls for an international investigation into a devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut. Torture complaints remained without effective investigation. Due to the economic crisis and COVID-19, dozens of migrant domestic workers were fired and found themselves trapped without passports or pay; the Ministry of Labour adopted a revised, standard unified contract for migrant workers that included new protections for migrant domestic workers, including vital safeguards against forced labour, but a judicial review body suspended its implementation.
BACKGROUND Hassan Diab’s government won a parliamentary vote of confidence on 11 February after his predecessor’s government had resigned in response to the October 2019 protest movement calling for an end to corruption and for radical change among the political elite. The economic crisis deteriorated, with unemployment rising exponentially and the UN stating that more than 55% of the population lived in poverty, almost double the previous year’s rate. On 7 March, the government defaulted, for the first time in its history, on Lebanon’s nearly US$90 billion debt. By the end of the year, the Lebanese lira had lost more than 80% of its value, depositors were unable to access
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