THE STATEWIDE Strategy for the Protection and Support of Human Rights has been approved by the Government Council for Human Rights, Ethnic Minorities and Gender Equality, with the document slated to be discussed by the government, the TASR newswire learnt on December 1.
It took three years to draft the Strategy and no one was excluded from the discussion about it, according to Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák who is serving as the coordinator for the drafting process and also chairs the government’s human rights council. No council member voted against the Strategy, with three members abstaining.
“Never in the course of Slovakia’s history was a document approved that had been subjected to such extensive public discussion,” Lajčák said after the talks, as quoted by TASR, “as which required so many sessions and seen such an intensive effort to arrive at a compromise solution.”
Some voices during the discussion, however, criticised the document for not being the product of a society-wide consensus. Civil activists, for instance, objected to the fact that the comments of only one opinion group were incorporated into the Strategy.
Lajčák asked the council members to state their objections or suggestions by December 5, if they had any and then they will be attached to the material but will not be part of the Strategy.
The task to draft the Statewide Strategy for the Protection and Support of Human Rights was embraced by Iveta Radičová’s government (2010-12) back in 2011.
“Slovakia doesn’t have a framework document of a human rights character,” underlined Lajčák, as quoted by TASR. “This Strategy is the first of its kind.”
Source: TASR
Compiled by Roman Cuprik from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
