STATEMENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION
25 MARCH 2025
Yesterday, the Council of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Human Rights, of which we are a member, met.
The Council is an advisory body. Any material that the government wishes to approve and that concerns human rights must first be submitted to the Council. However, this has not been the case with many proposals, which is in violation of legislative rules and the principles of participatory and transparent governance.
Our director, Rado Sloboda, and Adriana Mesochoritisová, statutory representative of the organization Možnosť voľby (Freedom of Choice), together with other members of the Council representing the professional public, proposed to include in the agenda key issues that currently pose the greatest threat to human rights in Slovakia.
They demanded:
- the withdrawal of the draft amendment to the constitutional law from SMER-SD and the rejection of the amendment to the constitutional law from KDH, which would fundamentally threaten the human rights of many people in Slovakia;
- that the Ministry of Justice explain the legal basis for excluding the organizations Inakosť and Liga za ľudské práva from the allocation of subsidies to support victims of crime for 2025;
- a discussion on the dangerous nature of the amendment, which radically tightens the original draft bill against non-governmental organizations proposed by a group of SNS MPs.
Despite numerous arguments clearly pointing to the incompatibility of the proposed constitutional amendments with the human rights obligations of the Slovak Republic, these demands were rejected.
The discussion on the SNS bill proposal was completely dismissed.
In the case of the excluded projects, the Ministry of Justice did not provide a legal basis for its decision and, instead of engaging in a dialogue, only displayed the arrogance of power. We therefore express our solidarity with the organizations in this way!
We are left with sadness and indignation at the way in which the functioning and conduct of the meetings of the Government Council for Human Rights and Gender Equality is changing. How a participatory expert body is turning into a place where constructive dialogue is disappearing.
