Secretariate of the deputy commissioner for fundamental rights ombudsman for the rights of national minorities

At the session of the National Assembly's Committee of Nationalities in Hungary held on 29 October 2024, the Ombudsman and the Minority Ombudsman presented their report on their activities in 2023, which was unanimously adopted and deemed suitable for plenary debate. The meeting was chaired by Serbian nationality advocate Alexov Lyubomir, Vice-Chairman of the Committee.

On 2 December, the plenary session of the National Assembly discussed the annual report on the activities of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights and his deputies in 2023. This is traditionally the last stage of the (political) assessment of the document: according to the Act on the National Assembly, the Committee on Nationalities and the Committee on Justice are obliged to review, discuss and express their opinion on the current report every year, and if confirmed, it will be submitted to the plenary session.

In the framework of a comprehensive investigation into the nationality content of museums, the Minority Ombudsman and her staff visited the nationality country house of the National-level Slovak Self-Government in Sátoraljaújhely-Rudabányácska. The Ethnographic Collection of Slovaks in Zemplén, which is classified as a museum of public interest, has been run by the Cultural Institute of Slovaks in Hungary as its own institution since 2015.

In the framework of a comprehensive investigation into the nationality content of museums, the Minority Ombudsman organised a workshop at the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights on 29 November. The aim of the five-hour meeting, which was attended by nearly twenty experts, was to present the basic situation revealed by the investigation, to discuss the professional findings and recommendations, and to clarify and supplement them.

On 13 December, the Roma Nationality Study Scholarship Diploma Ceremony took place, where, as in previous years, 25 talented Roma students with excellent secondary school performance received their diplomas. The young people concerned will receive a monthly scholarship of 30,000 HUF for the academic years 2024/2025 and 2025/2026, based on an open call for applications by the Ministry of the Interior. The event was opened by the Minority Ombudsman, followed by speeches by Attila Sztojka, State Secretary for Social Opportunities and Roma Relations, and István Aba-Horváth, President of the National-level Roma Self-Government.

On 16 February, at the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, the Ombudsman and the Minority Ombudsman presented the Justitia Regnorum Fundamentum Award to the 2023 nationality laureate at a ceremony. Doncsev Toso, writer, translator, sociologist, member of the Hungarian Writers' Union and the Bulgarian Writers' Union, first chairman of the Minority Round Table, which drafted the first Nationalities Act thirty years ago, was nominated for the award by the Minority Ombudsman.

The Minority Ombudsman and the association Res Iudicata - Judges for Social Consciousness are active participants in and committed supporters of the identification of access to justice issues and the development of jurisprudence through their domestic and international activities. Ensuring equal access to justice for members of vulnerable social groups, in particular children, people with disabilities, Roma or refugees, is a challenge for legislators from both a substantive and procedural perspective and requires daily attention from law enforcement officials. The phenomenon of unequal access is present in many countries across Europe, regardless of the legal context, but there are significant differences in the needs of different groups and in the tools available to compensate for them. The current social and technical challenges, in addition to the structural problems, have led to a wide range of legal and social science actors being involved in the issue and have inspired a number of solutions that can compensate for the inequality. With this in mind, they organised an international professional conference on 8 December 2023 at the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, with the participation of national and international experts, to present the problems and emerging opportunities in the field, in order to stimulate professional dialogue and to provide an opportunity to raise public awareness and strengthen solidarity with vulnerable groups in society.

The 67th Congress of the FUEN (Federal Union of European Nationalities) took place in Pécs, from 7-10 September 2023. Fifteen years after the 2008 congress, the city hosted for the second time the largest meeting of European national minorities and linguistic communities. This year the event's Hungarian organising partner and host was the National Self-Government of the Germans in Hungary.

As Minority Ombudsman, I am concerned that in recent days, the occurrence of a previous tragic crime has been used repeatedly by some organisations to publish content on various social media platforms that clearly incites hatred against Roma citizens living in our country. The same organisations have also announced a demonstration that could be used to violate the human dignity of members of the Roma community and to create fear in them.

In a special workshop organised by the Minority Ombudsman and the Working Group on Hate Crime, national experts in the field discussed good practices on the protection of victims of hate crime. The event brought together judges, prosecutors, police officers, lawyers, the high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Justice, the Victim Support Centre, the National Institute of Criminology and NGOs to share their professional experiences and to summarise the current challenges in this field.

For 14 years now, 23 February has been the anniversary of an inconceivable barbaric crime, which induces all those of good conscience and responsibility to engage in remembrance and to self-reflection.

The 15th session of the UN Forum on Minorities, a key event in international minority protection, was held in Geneva with great interest. Every year, the Minority Ombudsman participates as a key expert at the UN Forum on Minorities, which took place from 30 November to 2 December this year at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.