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Who could have predicted that in 2003 when New Tactics Notebook “Testing for Discrimination: Identifying and Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses” (updated in 2007) was published, it will have later a direct impact on the first Roma discrimination case decided in the national courts in Lithuania.

Two years after the publication of Notebook, the knowledge of possibility to apply testing technique in cases of direct discrimination was already well spread out in the human rights activists’ community. As one of the participants of the European Commission training for lawyers from the Baltic region on the European Union non-discrimination law, I learned from British human rights expert Barbara Cohen about the testing technique, when and how it could be applied.

Soon after, there appeared an opportunity to apply the learned skills in practice. A number of women in Roma settlement in Vilnius complained of being discriminated against when rejected for a simple labor work due to their ethnic origin. We decided to investigate the situation. We found one instance in which a Roma woman, before the job interview, was assured that the restaurant is looking for a dish washer.  However, when seeing her, the employer immediately rejected her saying that “there is no work for you” and also verbally insulted her because of woman’s ethnic origin.  We decided to test the situation. We sent a Lithuanian woman to apply for the same job on that same day. The Lithuanian woman was accepted right away and the administrator even commented during the interview that the same day Roma woman applied for work, but they could not take her because of her nationality – not wanting to have problems among the employees later (assuming that all Roma are potential thieves).

After this process of “testing for discrimination” it was very easy to file the complaint to the court and both national courts.  The Vilnius District court and Vilnius Regional court recognized the fact of discrimination and awarded the victim with monetary and non-monetary damages.

This experience helped me to understand how important it is to share this kind of human rights knowledge!  I hope that New Tactics will continue to support human rights activists by equipping them with tools to identify the best strategies and tools to fight for better protection and enhancement of human rights.