BackProf. Máté Szabó, Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary, hosted a conference on the actual situation, problems and challenges concerning children’s right to a healthy environment. Several scholars and representatives of governmental bodies and the civil society were presented on the one-day event.
In his welcoming notes Ombudsman Szabó emphasized the importance of examining children’s right to health in a broader context, focusing as well on the interest of future generations, poverty, environmental risks and access to basic services, like clean water.
Furthermore, Mrs Ágnes Lux, deputy head of department of the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, briefly summarized the inquiries conducted in the course of 2013 concerning children’s right to a healthy environment in the framework of the children’s rights project launched by Ombudsman Szabó in 2008. During the inquiries, the commissioner relied not solely on previous related works of the parliamentary commissioner for future generations and the parliamentary commissioner for the national and ethnic minorities’ rights but on the results of the project 2011 on children’s physical-mental health and provisions of the Basic Law and the UN Convention on the rights of the child, as well.
Other speakers at the conference included Mrs Ágnes Darvas, associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Lóránd University, Mr Attila Varga, senior researcher of the Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development, Mrs Zsófia Pusztai, office manager of WHO Country Office Hungary and Mrs Mária Herczog, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Source: Office of the Commissioner for fundamental Rights of Hungary
