Rita Izsák, the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, will present her study of the human rights situation for Romani people worldwide before the United Nations Human Rights Council at 18:00 today, Monday, 15 June 2015. The entire session of the HRC begins at 09:00 and can be followed live below.
The report reviews the human rights situation of Roma worldwide, including in Latin America. It notes that negative stereotypes of Roma persist worldwide, with hate speech against them widespread in the media, including social media, which largely goes unchallenged.
Ms Izsák was appointed to the post on 1 August 2011 and serves in an individual capacity. She holds a Masters in Law diploma from the Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary.
Inspired by her own experiences of prejudice and discrimination – her father’s family was forcibly moved from Slovakia to Hungary due to their Hungarian ethnicity in 1947 and her mother is of Romani origin – she has been working on human and minority rights for a decade, beginning at the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center and later becoming a Consultant with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Open Society Institute, the Roma Education Fund, and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development. She has worked in Africa as well as in Central and Eastern Europe and was responsible for several key priorities under Hungary’s EU Presidency in 2011, including the establishment of the European Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies.
