Quite significant changes have happened in Zoltán’s life nonetheless: he has become a father and, after eight years as a human rights lawyer defending people on the move, and 6 years of working as a community organiser, he has decided to start supporting them as a psychologist. And this only is a part of the exciting and so necessary work he has been accomplishing for the past years.
Defending the rule of law amidst Hungary’s authoritarian turn
Zoltán is a Programme Officer and Community Organiser of the Refugee Programme at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, ‘a public benefit human rights organisation that protects human dignity through legal and public activities’. They have been providing help to refugees, detainees and victims of law enforcement violence for decades and, Zoltán adds, with the authoritarian turn of the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister since 2010, ‘defending the rule of law and upholding democratic values and principles’, under constant threat.
Trusting and empowering the youth
For the past four years, Zoltán and his colleagues have been running a youth-engagement and political integration project that is very close to his heart. ‘We are building the next generation of human rights defenders’, he explains, stressing the importance of such future-oriented initiatives in more and more hostile contexts. Each semester, a group of young refugees, migrants and Hungarians aged 16 to 21 are invited to gather around a social issue or political challenge the Hungarian Helsinki Committee focuses on. During the following three months, they attend weekly research and training sessions and finally share the results of their work in forms ranging from human rights workshops for teachers to social theater performances. A three-day intensive camp is part of this rich and ambitious programme too, which, this semester, aims at investigating and raising awareness on the challenges faced by refugees and migrants in Budapest and Hungary.
‘The group has been researching the topic, collecting stories, and interviewing politicians too!’, Zoltán tells me, ‘Just last week they got to meet with the vice mayor of one of Budapest’ municipalities, a very committed woman who impressed them with her determination and courage. ‘Such encounters change those young people’s perception of people in power’ – who themselves appreciate the former’s work and thoroughness greatly.
Choosing the harder way
In this programme which draws from South-American critical pedagogies, the participants are considered as no less than experts – of their life and experiences, and, thus, asked to build on them and come up with analyses of and solutions to the issues they face every day. ‘Even when I share their cultural background’, Zoltán admits, ‘I feel worlds away from those teenagers’ who have so much to teach us. In a few weeks, the programme’s participants will start preparing a series of forum theater performances to be played in front of and with a refugee and migrant audience. Together, through scenes inspired by their own challenges, they will enact ways to respond to and subvert them.
For the previous semester, dedicated to police violence and systemic racism, the group elaborated and facilitated workshops for high school students and teachers. ‘We try to choose the harder way’, Zoltán confirms. ‘We took them to the north-east of Hungary, one of the poorest regions of Europe, in a Roma high-school. On a topic like that, we quickly understood that, in such a context, we had to listen and think even more, so as not to appear as the experts coming from the city. Students and school staff gave us very honest feedback, told us how they faced racism every day. It was a very humbling experience for us all.’
Democracy as a practice, movement and horizon
Zoltán and his colleagues indeed do not shy away from harshness and complexity with this project they put a lot of time and effort in. ‘This year, our group had young women with origins in Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Ukraine. We had all the issues of the world gathered in one room! Our first mission then is to have them meet, learn from one another and find solidarity rather than competition amidst trauma.’ And it seems to be a success: participants come back from one semester to the next and, ‘the more courses they take, the more engaged they become’, Zoltán notices. During the first two years of the programme, supported by a generous grant, the participants were paid, ‘for we recognize that volunteering is a privilege’. Yet, now that funding has become scarce, teenagers keep on enrolling for free. They gain so much from the experience itself. ‘They feel that they are important, that their voice is heard. Here, contrary to regular state school where they are taught to keep quiet, they can be critical with us. We ask them for feedback and ideas to improve the project’.
If Zoltán and his colleagues, like the participants, wish for the programme to keep going and get better indeed, it is now at a real risk due to a great lack of funding. Its organizers at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee work part or extra-time to keep it alive, and the last camp was organized in the house of one of Zoltán’s relatives, he tells me with a smile. ‘We could have stayed in boring Budapest and met three days at our usual office, but we still wanted to take them away, give them the opportunity of a real adventure.’
It is more much than that, which they all are making together, I believe. It is a bold, and transformative political project, reminding us that, if anything, democracy is a practice, a movement, and a horizon.
Aude Sathoud
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Cover picture: Human Rights Youth Camp, June 2025