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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In 1994, after the enactment of Hungary's Minority Rights legislation (herein the Act), representatives from India rather than Roma themselves were invited to represent the Roma at the signing ceremony, against the request of Roma leaders. During an interview in August 2000, former member of Parliament and Roma leader Aladar Horvath describes the events this way:
[t]hey invited all the representatives of the nationalities, and the representative of the Hungarian Gypsies was someone from India … Antall Jozsef made a speech in which he said he wouldn't prevent that Hungarian Gypsies consider India as a mothercountry, and India considers the Hungarian Gypsies as children. In the Indian Embassy, they didn't say a word, and I said, as a member of Parliament: we very much appreciate this gesture that the politicians made, but thank you very much but that's not really what we want. We have very thin roots in Iridia, but they are much stronger here in Europe and Hungary.
1. Interview with Horvath, Aladar, 15 August 2000.Google Scholar
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12. The Act, Article 1, Section 2.Google Scholar
13. It is important to note that the Roma comprise Hungary's sole recognized ethnic minority under the Act.Google Scholar
14. The Act, Article 1, Section 2.Google Scholar
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34. These seven questions are discussed in the Lund Recommendations. The Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life, convened by the Foundation on Interethnic Relations at the request of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM), offer concrete guidelines taken from commitments made by the OSCE in the 1990 Copenhagen Document on the meeting of the Human Dimension, the 1995 Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, Article 2, Paragraphs 1 and 2. Specifically, the Lund Recommendations provide “concrete activities, including the elaboration of the various concepts and mechanisms of good governance with the effective participation of minorities, leading to integration of diversity within the State.” The purpose of these guidelines is to encourage and facilitate the adoption by states of specific measures related to national minorities. Drafted by jurists, political scientists and sociologists under the chairmanship of the Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, these measures attempt to clarify international efforts to ensure minorities (1) have their interests represented in government; (2) participate directly in public life; (3) gain skills in order to participate effectively.Google Scholar
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