Hungarian foreign minister addresses UN Human Rights Council

Geneva, February 28 (MTI) – Protecting human rights is a priority task for the United Nations and its Human Rights Council (HRC) is a highly important institution, Hungary’s foreign minister said in Geneva on Tuesday.

Addressing the 34th HRC session, Péter Szijjártó called it important that no UN member state should use human rights as a tool of exerting pressure on another state.

It is equally important that none of the member states should “be held hostage” in a dispute that purely concerns inter-state relations, he said.

Allowing too much politics to surround human rights is still present around the world and certainly “undermines” the credibility of efforts aimed at enforcing such rights, he said.

As an HRC member, Hungary will do its utmost to prevent reports from being drafted by “bureaucrats” who in fact had never visited the country in question, he said.

“We will do our best to ensure that balanced and factual reports are prepared following consultations with the subject country’s officials,” Szijjártó said.

The minister said Hungary would also do its best to make sure the HRC avoids situations that involve “so-called civil organisations representing some kind of political interest” issuing “biased” reports about countries without talking to enough key representatives from the country in question.

Szijjártó highlighted three key areas which he said the HRC needed to focus on.

The first area he mentioned was the persecution of Christians. He said four out of five people who get killed for their religion in the world today are Christians. He criticised the West for what he called its “hypocrisy” on the issue of anti-Christian sentiment. Szijjártó said the West’s “hypocrisy” gave the impression that anti-Christian sentiment was the “least severe” form of discrimination.