“Human rights start in our immediate environment, at home, school and work. In these places all men, women and children are entitled to the same rights, treatment and equality of opportunity,” said Monika Balatoni, Minister of State for Social Relations at the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice at the press conference held on the occasion of Human Rights Day on Tuesday.
Some fundamental human rights—including the right to family, learning and work—acquire their true meaning precisely in everyday life, emphasised the Minister of State, head of the Government’s Human Rights Working Group. Human rights do not exist because legislators, politicians or philosophers once decided this. Similarly, civil society is not a resolution of decision-makers or the powers-that-be, she added. You can live your minority existence, culture, practice your religion and organise into civil communities even if you get little, if any, recognition or help from the State or politics, she explained.
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She said the Human Rights Working Group was designed to help Parliament adopt laws that make life easier for people, whether Hungarian or non-Hungarian citizens living in Hungary or even Hungarians beyond the borders. The working group monitors human rights and is also in charge of checking how human rights are asserted in everyday life.
There are twelve thematic groups responsible for a variety of areas, including Roma issues, asylum and migration, women and children, rights of people with disabilities, and freedom of expression. Their work is helped by 45 NGOs selected through tendering, as well as experts, such as the Equal Treatment Authority, the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights and the Századvég Foundation.
Parliament adopted the amendment of the Criminal Code during the summer, which now includes intimate partner violence as a factual definition under criminal law to protect women’s rights, which was major progress among the Government’s human rights actions, the press conference was told by Minister of State for Justice Róbert Répássy. Regarding the protection of children’s rights, Mr Répássy stressed that the Ministry dedicated 2013 to the protection of child victims and child-friendly administration of justice, and that the final vote is coming up on draft legislation to reinforce the criminal protection of children.
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Speaking about the protection of senior citizens’ rights, he made special mention of victim assistance programmes. Mr Répássy said a review of legal provisions disqualifying people with disabilities has abolished the restriction on suffrage for more than 1,300 people under guardianship since 1 January 2012, according to figures from the National Office of the Judiciary. This represents twenty percent of those concerned, he added. The review will be extended to the restriction on everyone under guardianship during the five years after the new Civil Code comes into force. As for the LGBT community, he said the new Criminal Code stipulates stricter punishment for violence against groups organised according to sexual orientation and sexual identity, in the scope of the factual definition of violence against members of a community. Among civic rights, Mr Répássy highlighted changes in voting rights, primarily suffrage for Hungarians living beyond Hungary’s borders.
Balázs Orbán, Director of Research at the Századvég Foundation, reported that a poll of two thousand respondents showed that 98 percent of people think human rights are either important or very important. The survey looked at the extent to which people know human rights and think they are important. 69 percent of respondents were able to name at least one human right, while the second and third mentions elicited 1,152 and 786 meaningful answers, respectively.
The survey also verified that the respondents can not or not only name human rights that are enshrined in the Fundamental Law or those that have key status in terms of the science of constitutional law. A case in point was that most people mentioned the right to human dignity and life, whereas the right to property and housing was mentioned in the second place, and other rights that cannot be placed in major groups were mentioned in the third place. Examples include health, data protection, children’s rights and family law. These were followed by the classical freedoms, such as freedom of expression, the right to freedom, and freedom of conscience and religion.
The UN General Assembly proclaimed December 10 as Human Rights Day in 1954 to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the same day in 1948. This document summarises what are called classical political and civil rights, along with a certain scope of economic, social and cultural rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been ratified by every State around the world.
(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)
