Latvian Human Rights Committee
First about a positive example from Latvia. It is possible to be a candidate in local elections right after
attaining the age of majority. Then about some problems. We still have thousands of stateless young
people. Almost all of them belong to ethnic and also linguistic minorities. Because of that, our first
recommendation concerns children.
To give citizenship by default to people born to stateless parents. Currently it's not yet the case in
Latvia and every year several tens of people are being born and remain stateless. Despite an initiative
from the President of Latvia this year to the contrary, which was rejected by the Parliament. And the
second related recommendation from our side is to allow for voting in the same local elections for all
the permanent residents of a country. It is especially notable in the modern world when in many
countries a significant part of the population does not have the citizenship of the country of
residence. Thank you very much.