The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) carried out a periodic visit to Hungary in May 2023. The recently published report on the visit highlights several issues, also raised by the HHC, which undermine humane detention in Hungary. In particular, the Committee identified ill-treatment by police and prison staff as a critical issue that remains unresolved in the country.
Recent legislative proposals threaten with the “suspension” of Hungarian citizenship, violate freedom of assembly, and effectively ban Pride. These changes represent a significant escalation in the Government’s efforts to suppress dissent and weaken human rights protection, and elevate exclusion and the threatening of dissenters to a constitutional level.
How the Ombudsperson’s weak independence and concentrated mandates weaken fundamental rights protection – Human rights defenders assess the performance of Hungary’s national human rights institution
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee is participating in a European research project examining the impact of digitalisation on procedural rights in criminal proceedings in Hungary. The project aims to promote the implementation of digitalisation in criminal proceedings in a way that ensures the consistent and complete enforcement of procedural rights, providing a uniform and adequate level of protection across the EU.
Despite rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and repeated calls by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe over the past 13 years, Hungary still fails to tackle prison overcrowding and inhumane detention conditions. As a result, large-scale rights violations persist.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) utilised all human rights CSO tools (research, advocacy, empowerment, strategic litigation, public- and professional awareness raising) to eliminate mandatory glass partitioning between inmates and their family members in Hungarian prisons during visits for seven years. The seven-year-long status quo is currently changing.
The aim of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s project is to improve the quality of contact in prisons. The preservation of family ties is fundamental to the reintegration of prisoners, so it is not only in … Read more
In October 2024, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee submitted its observations to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the Gubacsi v. Hungary group of cases for the 7th time. This group of … Read more
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee participated at the 2024 OSCE Human Dimension Conference and took the floor and provided written submissions on the situation of human rights defenders and civic space, on the rights of asylum-seekers … Read more
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee coordinated a coalition of three civil society organisations (CSOs) working in Hungary to contribute to General Comment 27 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC), which focuses on children’s rights to access to justice and effective remedies. In its draft General Comment, the CRC aims to clarify the terms, approaches and actions that States should take to implement the right of all children to access to justice and effective remedies when their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child fail to be respected.
The two-year novel capacity-building programme by the Hertie School Executive Education and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, concludes in Berlin.
Hungary has been failing to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that established rights violations with regard to applicants sentenced to whole life imprisonment and life imprisonment with the possibility of a parole. In its recent submission, the HHC demonstrates once again how the Hungarian authorities had not only failed to carry out the necessary legal changes, but that individual measures that would be required to bring the violations to an end with regard to the applicants are prevented as well.
The Criminal Justice Programme of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) drafted a comprehensive response to the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency’s (FRA) FRANET research network’s Hungarian focal point touching upon 18 topics related to Criminal Detention in the European Union: Conditions and Monitoring.
A ministerial decree has been published, outlining the comprehensive rules for the implementing of a credit system in Hungarian penitentiary institutions starting from 1 March 2024. The core concept of the credit system revolves around the … Read more
Nine years after the European Court of Human Rights condemned Hungary for violating the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment due to its prison conditions, detainees continue to face substandard living conditions that fall short … Read more
Hungary has failed to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that established large-scale rights violations concerning detention conditions. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee has expressed concern several times regarding the recent surge in the number of persons detained in Hungarian penitentiaries, which led to overcrowding and substandard detention conditions. Additionally, evidence is provided by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) that there is still a lack of effective remedy for prisoners against decisions taken in the prison system, along with the compensation system suffering from several shortcomings already clearly identified by the Committee of Ministers.
Since 2017, the Hungarian National Penitentiary Administration ordered prisons to conduct the most common prison visits in groups where several detainees and their visitors are separated by a plastic partition, a so-called plexiglass wall, under control, regardless of their security classification, without an individual risk assessment. Any physical contact between detainees and their visitors is strictly prohibited. In October 2023, the European Court of Human Rights found that this general practice violates the right to respect for private and family life – Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Prisoners are just as vulnerable to insect bites as others living in closed institutions.
In an ever-evolving legal landscape, staying ahead of the curve is essential. The STARLIGHT programme, a joint initiative by the Hertie School and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC), has paved the way for 60 legal practitioners in the European Union to harness the full potential of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR) through strategic litigation.
HHC attended the OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference and submitted statements on shrinking civic space, violations of the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers, freedom of assembly, and the rule of law.