How the World Lithuanian Community is organised: its constitution in outline

Most people meet the World Lithuanian Community through its local face: a weekend school, a parish hall event, a choir. Behind those sits a written constitution that sets out who belongs, who decides and who checks the decisions. It is a short document, a few dozen numbered articles, and reading it explains a lot about why Lithuanian community life abroad works the way it does. This page summarises its structure in plain English. It is an outline written in our own words, not a translation; anyone who needs the exact wording should read the official Lithuanian text.

Where the constitution comes from

The organisation's first constitution was adopted at its founding Seimas in New York in 1958. The version in use was adopted at the fourth Seimas, held in Washington in 1973, and has since been amended several times: by a postal vote in 1979, at Seimas sessions in Chicago in 1983 and in Vilnius in 1997, and most recently at the fourteenth Seimas in Vilnius in 2012. Its opening article names the Lithuanian Charter of 1949 as the basis on which it rests.

The membership principle

The constitution starts from a very wide idea of membership. The community is made up of all Lithuanians living outside the Republic of Lithuania, together with their family members. There is no application form and no test of language or descent written into the worldwide document. In practice, people take part through the national community of the country they live in, which may keep its own membership lists and ask for a yearly contribution.

When I first moved to Dublin, I assumed you had to join something formally before you could turn up to a community event. You do not. The constitution treats belonging as something you have, and taking part as something you choose.

National communities and their statutes

Each country's Lithuanian community governs itself under statutes it adopts on its own. Those statutes must fit two things: the laws of that country and the worldwide constitution. This is why the Lithuanian community in one country may be a registered charity, in another a non-profit association, and in a third a looser network, while all of them sit in the same worldwide structure.

National communities elect their own boards and choose their own way of electing delegates to the worldwide Seimas.

The Seimas: the highest body

The Seimas (a congress, borrowing the name of the Lithuanian parliament) is the supreme body of the World Lithuanian Community. Its main powers, in outline:

• adopting and amending the constitution;
• setting the common direction and discussing relations between national communities;
• electing the board, the control commission and the dispute committee;
• coordinating cultural and educational work and looking for ways to keep Lithuanian identity alive abroad;
• approving the board's report and the control commission's audit.

Who votes

The voting members are, first, the delegates elected by each national community. Every national community elects at least one, and the board decides how many each may send. Where a country has no organised community yet, its largest general Lithuanian organisation may be allowed to send delegates. Also voting are the members of the worldwide board, the chairs of the national boards, the chairs of the control commission and dispute committee, and the chairs of the national youth associations. Delegates are elected for three years and must be at least 18.

How it meets and decides

The board

The Seimas elects a board for three years and decides how many members it has and where it is based. The chair of the World Lithuanian Youth Association, or someone that association appoints, also sits on it. The board carries out the Seimas's decisions, coordinates education, culture, social and political work with other Lithuanian organisations, keeps national communities informed, and reports each year with an activity report, a budget and a plan. It may set up commissions for particular fields and may co-opt a limited number of extra members.

Oversight: two smaller bodies

The control commission checks the finances of the worldwide board, the youth association and the other worldwide bodies and reports its findings to the Seimas.

The dispute committee (in Lithuanian, the Konfliktų sprendimo komitetas) is the closest thing the organisation has to a court. When asked, it interprets the constitution and the youth association's statute, gives its view on whether decisions of the worldwide bodies were lawful under those rules, speaks on matters of principle touching Lithuanian honour, and settles conflicts that a national community cannot resolve on its own. Older documents call a body with a similar role a court of honour.

Both are elected for three years, and their terms end with the board's.

Neutrality

One clause shapes the organisation's whole public manner. The constitution commits the community to supporting an independent Lithuanian state and its democratically elected leadership, but it does not tie itself to any single political party, group or movement, to any single ideology or world view, or to any single religion. That is why community events can bring together people who vote very differently and worship in different churches, or none.

Money

The World Lithuanian Community is defined as a non-profit organisation. Its funds come from contributions passed on by national communities (a set share of the solidarity contributions they collect), from donations and bequests, and from support that national communities choose to give.

Why it matters to an ordinary member

For most families none of this is visible day to day. Still, the outline explains a few things: why your local chapter answers to a national board rather than to Vilnius, why delegates from small countries sit beside those from large ones, and why the organisation stays out of party politics. A general introduction to the organisation is on the World Lithuanian Community primer, and more on community life is in the community circle.