Council of Europe

Lithuania delivered statement during the council's general debate in Geneva.

Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Michael Oflarizzi intervened in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights concerning Georgia's Foreign Agents Registration Act.

He argued that the law forms part of the restrictions intended to intimidate civil society organisations.

NGOs and media groups challenged the legislation at Strasbourg in September 2025.

Why is that? I mean, I know the link, but for the benefit of our listeners, why has that been included? What's the importance there?

Yeah, so it was actually born out of an initiative that runs across the whole of Europe by the Council of Europe and the European Union called European Heritage Days.

So each country at this time of year that's involved have their own similar thing going on.

So it's good to know if anyone's got any holidays planned over the next couple of weeks anywhere in Europe.

And here's where this idea comes from.

In 2020, the Council of Europe published an updated version of the CEFR framework.

You know, the document that defines what A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2 actually mean.

This is the source, by the way.

Uh, essentially there was this thinking of how can you create another democratic mechanism to try and solve some of the longstanding issues that have accumulated there over that time? And the Venice Commission back then proposed to try to create a deliberative mechanism involving citizens.

Um, this was taken up by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe in one of their national action plans to try a pilot.

It, it has never been done in this region ever before, you know, this kind of deliberative, randomly, um, composed process of randomly composed citizens.

So they set up a international group of experts, I was the local expert in this group, to design and to set in motion the first citizens' assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which happened in 2021 in Mostar.

... uh, by name on what they've been doing for the past, say, four years or so.

No, sure.

No, I just ask because, um, it's, it's interesting that over time, it's always been interesting for me to see that the, uh, donors, the bodies that are funding these events, and I think this one was funded by the Council of Europe.

Is that correct?

I mean, there have been ICC and arrest warrants issued and indictments by the International Criminal Court, including of Putin himself.

There has been the creation of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression that has been created by the Council of Europe.

But nobody has yet been convicted by these international courts because no trials have taken place because they have not been able to be brought before a tribunal because they're staying in Russia, understandably.

So there is this sort of sense of like they're breaking the rules and they're getting away with it.

They have a hard time getting access to their travel for a lot of these Russian officials is extremely limited.

So, I mean, it's not to say that there haven't been consequences.

Russia has been kicked out of the Council of Europe.

The G8 is now the G7.

So over to Europe.

The Council of Europe states, knows that sex is a biological fact and gender, on the other hand, is a social construction.

But it's got an educational resource, Gender Matters, in which it says, however, it is important to note that everyone has a gender.

It defines gender identity as the gender to which persons feel they belong.

Now, the Council of Europe, as we know, is slightly different or is different from the European Union.

The European Union institutions explicitly distinguish sex from gender or gender identity.

And they continue to collect sex data.