Anybody may become defenceless in the face of the state’s power.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health, and cultural rights of children. The implementation of the CRC … Read more
The general prohibition of residing on public premises for habitation was placed on constitutional level after the amendment of the Fundamental Law in 2018. The Act on Misdemeanors was also amended in October 2018. After … Read more
Zsolt Csonka was taken to Sellye police station for questioning as witness in relation to timber theft in February 2013. According to the police record, he waived his right to counsel at the beginning of … Read more
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a UN Convention, adopted in 1965 and is in force in Hungary since 1969. The Convention is monitored by the UN … Read more
Call for Applications for a Consultant to Research Trial Waiver Systems in Hungary Fair Trials, in support of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, is seeking a consultant to conduct research into the use of trial waiver … Read more
The transnational project coordinated by the Vienna-based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights aimed to contribute to the development of the practice of 22 European National Preventive Mechanisms enhancing experience exchange among these … Read more
The transnational project coordinated by the Fair Trials aims at secondary analysis of existing research papers, interviews of experts and organizing roundtable discussions in order to reveal discrimination against Roma people in the criminal justice … Read more
HHC briefing papers related to the CPT’s ad hoc and periodic visits to Hungary
The Punitive State: if you can’t solve it, ban it!
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee launched its new project with three other civil-society organizations: Fair Trials Europe from Belgium, APADOR-CH from Romania and Antigone from Italy in order to enhance the accessibility of the communication in … Read more
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee was a partner in the international project “Strengthening procedural rights in criminal proceedings: effective implementation of the right to a lawyer/legal aid under the Stockholm Programme”, coordinated by the Bulgarian Helsinki … Read more
Ten months after the scandal broke concerning the Topház social care institution the Hungarian Data Protection Authority stated: the fact that the civil organization uncovering the horrible conditions took photos and published them anonymised in … Read more
The HHC’s shadow reports and its suggestions for questions to be included in the List of Issues for the UN Human Rights Committee
The transnational project coordinated by the Vienna based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute aimed to facilitate experience exchange among the National Human Rights Institutions (which is the ombudsman in Hungary) operating in the European Union. In the … Read more
Ahead of the hearing before the ECtHR on 20 December in the Beuze v. Belgium case, NGO coalition expresses its hope that the European Court of Human Rights will rule in a way which guarantees that individuals cannot be convicted if were unlawfully denied early access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings.
Authorities terminated cooperation agreements with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and denied access to police detention, prisons and immigration detention after two decades of cooperation and 2000+ visits. The HHC can no longer monitor human rights … Read more
Within the framework of our EU project called “Suspects in restrains – the importance of appearance: how suspects and accused persons are presented in the courtroom, in public and in the media (SIR)”, we carried … Read more
The ProCam project funded by the European Commission’s Justice Programme is an international project on audiovisual recording of police interrogations of suspects, including minors and vulnerable persons. The overall objective of this multi-jurisdictional research is … Read more
Promoting access to case materials of defendants and their defense counsels in criminal proceedings has been a long-standing priority of the HHC, and is related to activities involving a series of successful applications submitted to … Read more
In its March 2015 pilot judgment issued in the Varga and Others v. Hungary case (in which three of the applicants were represented by the HHC), the European Court of Human Rights concluded that the overcrowding of penitentiaries in Hungary constitutes a structural problem, and Hungary should produce a plan to reduce overcrowding.