Interactive dialogue with Mr. Mutuma Ruteere, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance
Statement by H.E. András Dékány
Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Hungary

Madam President,

My delegation would like to thank the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance for his recent report, which contains in its addendum the findings of his visit to Hungary, carried out in May 2011. Hungary fully supports the important mandate of the Special Rapporteur. We highly appreciated the professional, comprehensive and balanced approach he showed during his mission in Hungary, while he was addressing complex and sensitive issues, such as the situation of Roma, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or questions like hate speech, anti-Semitism, or extremist political parties and movements. My Government prizes the excellent co-operation with the SR during this evaluation exercise, which resulted - among others - that most of our substantial comments were taken on board in his report. The detailed comments by the Government of Hungary can be found in the annex of the Special Rapporteur’s report, so I just would like to highlight few important complementary information at this stage.

The Hungarian Roma community is represented by three members in the Parliament. The Act on the rights of minorities, coming into force on 1 January 2012, enlarges the scope of authority and responsibilities of minority self-governments by their involvement into social and communal work programmes, which increases particularly the activity of Roma minority self-governments in this field. The deputy prime minister concluded a strategic cooperation agreement with the national minority self-governments, including the National Roma self-government, which enables their intensive involvement into the preparation of Governmental decisions.

Hungary elaborated its National Social Inclusion Strategy in 2011, as part of the implementation of the EU Framework for National Strategies for Roma Integration. The Strategy is complex: it lays down an immediate action plan, and also assigns long term tasks. The action plan determines specific tasks, identifies the responsible Members of Government and sets deadlines in the areas of child welfare, education, employment, health care, housing, the involvement of the individuals concerned, the awareness raising and the fight against discrimination.

The Government of Hungary and the National Roma Self-Government acknowledge the fact that the situation of the Roma community sharing common destiny with the non- Roma society, had worsened in the past decades in numerous spheres of life. Therefore, the two parties signed the Framework Agreement in order to reaffirm that the strengthening of the co-existence of the Roma and non- Roma population and building a common future is of utmost importance.

Hungary started to establish a comprehensive migration strategy that contains the main elements of an integration strategy as well. With the financial help of the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals, the Ministry of Interior funded several projects aimed at preventing and eliminating racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia and promoting awareness-raising of the Hungarian society to migration, integration and the role of migrants in the Hungarian society. It is worth noting that persons granted international protection in Hungary (refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection) with a few exceptions enjoy the same rights as Hungarian nationals, and also receive special benefits and support. The living conditions provided for asylum seekers comply with the relevant EU legislation. Furthermore the Ministry of Interior supports projects aiming at improving the living conditions of both persons granted international protection and asylum seekers and the integration of beneficiaries of international protection.

There is no routine detention of asylum-seekers in Hungary. As a general rule, asylum seekers are accommodated in reception centres. There is an exception: when a foreigner is already in administrative detention and submits an application for international protection. In compliance with the relevant EU Directive, Hungarian legislation ensures that the administrative detention of third country nationals can only be ordered in cases set out in law and only unless other sufficient but less coercive measures can not be applied effectively in a specific case. According to the law, detention shall be immediately terminated when its ground ceases to exist, and its implementing decree provides that the authority ordering the detention shall endeavour to ensure that the detention is ordered for the shortest period possible. The lawfulness of the detention is ensured by continuous judicial control: the administrative authority can only order detention for a maximum of 72 hours and the prolongation of the detention have to be decided by a court. According to the law, unaccompanied minors cannot be detained at all. The right to legal representation is guaranteed to every detainee. The general rules of administrative detention described above are also relevant in case of the detention of asylum seekers. However in their case detention is immediately terminated where the person concerned is granted international protection, thus its legal basis and its aim is extinguished. Besides the general guarantees, the aim that the administrative detention of asylum seekers is reduced to the shortest period possible is ensured by the prioritisation of the examination of applications for international protection lodged by detained persons. In order to avoid the unnecessary detention of asylum seekers, Hungarian law stipulates that an asylum seeker shall not be held in detention for the sole reason that he/she is an asylum seeker. Furthermore the government plans to revise the legislation on administrative detention in autumn this year in order to further decrease the cases of detention.

Administrative detention is executed in specialized detention facilities run by the Police. Recently a number of measures were taken aiming at modifying the rules of the detention facilities in order to make them less strict. Furthermore, social worker and psychologist assistance is provided every day at all detention facility. Detainees also have internet access at every detention facility. Moreover as the Police is committed to ameliorate the conditions of administrative detention and to take into account the needs of detainees, a discussion took place among the Police, UNHCR, IOM and Hungarian NGOs in November 2011 in order to identify the problems and also to find solutions together. On the basis of this discussion, the Police adopted an action plan in March 2012. According to this action plan further measures are to be taken regarding the improvement of detention conditions. Intercultural training of the staff of the detention facility will be an obligatory precondition of employment. Besides the planned actions, from this year specialized human rights trainings are already available for police officers, immigration officers and judges (including criminal judges.

Let me conclude by thanking once again the Special Rapporteur for its professional work which has been highly appreciated by my Government and expressing our commitment that his recommendations will be fully implemented and followed up.