ON THE BURDEN OF PROOF: Application to Parliamentary Ombudsman 4D-2010/1-843 (18 November 2010) The Lithuanian Parliamentary Ombudsman received a complaint against the Migration Division of the Vilnius Territorial Police Unit. The applicant, born in Lithuania and incarcerated at the time of filing the complaint, claimed he had approached the authorities about obtaining Lithuanian citizenship in 2004 and was asked in response to prove that he had been living in Lithuania prior to 1993. He appealed to the court in 2006, but the case was not heard because of an unpaid administrative fee and insufficient procedural documents. The Parliamentary Ombudsman rejected the application and noted that national law does not oblige officers in migration agencies to collect information regarding the acquisition of citizenship or a residence permit, this being the duty of the person concerned. It did, however, recommend that the director of the corrective facility where the applicant was incarcerated facilitate the process of accessing the court and preparing relevant documents according to their competence. Ad 2) asylum procedure In the asylum procedure, the applicant is obliged to provide all necessary information about him or herself. If the applicant’s claims cannot be supported by written proof, the information relevant to the determination process will be assessed. The decisive issues are country of origin information, obtained and analyzed by the Migration Department, and the coherence of the facts reported by the applicant.171 If the applicant claims to be stateless, the Migration Department will accept the claim if it is coherent and does not contradict general country of origin information regarding statelessness and nationality.172 Ad 3) removal procedure In removal procedures, even if a person claims to be stateless, the examination of the case will be aimed at finding a country to which the person can be returned. The individual subject to the procedure is obliged to fully cooperate with the SBGS/other authorities involved in the procedure, who will undertake the investigation.173 In all the three procedures outlined above, the burden of proof is not clearly established by law, nor is it clear whether it in practice is applied in line with the guidance referred to above, pursuant to the UNHCR Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons. As no dedicated statelessness determination procedure exists in Lithuania, procedural aspects are not specifically provided for by law. Therefore, there exists the possibility that a stateless person might not be identified as stateless, and thus as eligible to enjoy the rights guaranteed by the 1954 Convention. 3.3.2.3 ACCESS TO COURTS As there exists no formal statelessness determination procedure in Lithuania and no formally recognized status of stateless with rights attached to that status, there is no mechanism by which persons who believe they have been wrongly identified as nationals of a given country (instead of being recognized as stateless) can appeal such a decision to a court of law, or an independent, quasi-judicial body. 48 171 Law on the Legal Status of Aliens, Article 83. 172 Interview with representatives of the Lithuanian Red Cross Society, 7 August 2012. 173 Interview with a representative of the FRC, 17 August 2012. M A P P I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S I N L I T H UA N I A