Foreign Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák on Wednesday, August 15, submitted for comments a proposal extending the statutes of the Government Council for Human Rights, Ethnic Minorities and Gender Equality, envisaging the establishment of a committee for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
The council will be established as a permanent expert body of the government's human rights council. It will address fundamental issues related to the improvement of the rights of non-heterosexuals and attempt to make state policies within this matter more effective. It should be chaired by Justice Minister Tomáš Borec, while the tasks of the committee's secretariat will be carried out by the Justice Ministry. Members of the committee will be nominated by non-governmental organisations and the state administration, the TASR newswire wrote.
The human rights committee recommended that the government set up the body on July 30. This proposal was rejected by the previous government of Iveta Radičová on May 11, 2011, when the motion failed to be passed by a single vote. Christian Democratic Movement-KDH and some Slovak Democratic and Christian Union-SDKÚ ministers voted against it. Lajčák does not expect that the government will encounter any problems with setting up the committee.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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