Helping Christians in Syria is Europe’s duty, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Human Capacities stated on Tuesday in Budapest in his welcome speech delivered as part of the conference series of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University on persecuted Christians.
Member States need the right kind of solidarity in the European Union in the context of the migration crisis, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog told the German national public service radio station Deutschlandfunk.
Respect for human rights is not just a legal issue, but also a cultural one, the Minister of Human Capacities stressed at the conference held in Budapest on Wednesday on the occasion of the upcoming Human Rights Day.
Retired Archbishop of Krakow and former aide to Pope Saint John Paul II Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz received this year’s Petőfi Award. The accolade, which is awarded by the House of Terror Museum’s foundation and the MOL Group, was presented at a ceremony in Budapest’s House of Terror Museum on Tuesday.
“The countries of the Visegrád Group (V4) are placing particular emphasis on developing a fair education system, on creating opportunities for talented Roma students, and on measures aimed at helping them enter and remain in higher education. The number of young Roma in higher education had doubled in Hungary during the past three years”, Minister of State for Social Affairs and Inclusion Károly Czibere said at the V4 conference entitled “The Participation of Roma Youth in Higher Education in the Visegrád Countries in Light of the EU Framework for Roma Integration Strategy”.
Fourth grade Hungarian students who took part in the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy) Study last year achieved Hungary’s best ever results so far.
“The Government is helping persecuted Christians in several ways”, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog said at his annual hearing before Parliament’s Justice Committee on Tuesday. In addition to Church issues, the Minister also reported on the status of issues relating to non-governmental organisations and social inclusion.
A Family Affairs Cabinet has been formed. The agenda of its first meeting featured the establishment of a demography policy institute under the name of sociologist Mária Kopp and a variety of family support measures, the Minister of Human Capacities and the Minister of State for Family, Youth and International Affairs said at a press conference held after the meeting.
“Roma inclusion is a common issue, a much more important issue than to allow us to entrust it to the Roma alone and an important issue that cannot be realised without the Roma”, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog declared at a session of the Roma Coordination Council.
The participants of the two-day conference held on 11-13 October 2017 entitled “International conference on the Persecution of Christians - Seeking Answers to a Long-neglected Crisis”, hosted by the Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians within the Ministry of Human Capacities, adopted the Budapest Declaration.